#Embrace my crow nature | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kaixserzz · 8 months

Text

The Fox, the Crow, and the Bunny.

ੈ♡˳ Il Dottore and Gn!Child!Reader *ೃ༄

ੈ♡˳ 2.4k words ┊ Fluff *ೃ༄

ੈ♡˳ Masterlist | JLM Masterlist *ೃ༄

author's note ˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚

something sweet. dedicated to @idyllic-affections thanks for writing my kaveh rq n this series is inspired by ur acc.. realized i strayed from the real purpose of this fic and made it too long, so just think of it as a 2 in 1 special lol,, (also hi sorry for using dottore he's like my muse and i love writing him) also i hope yall get the meaning of this shit lmao (ref to the scara quest tale)

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ cw: strictly platonic/familial, reader is 8 years old, basic dottore warnings, mentions of death, dissecting animals and injuries, implied dottolone (barely), a little ooc but it's canon to me

Dottore's office was once a sacred chamber inside the Fatui headquarters.

While not relatively as pristine as his laboratory, amidst the chaos, there was order. Everything was in its designated place, even though his desk was a nightmare to whoever laid eyes on it (spilled coffee too busy to clean, now dried onto the wood of his table, piles, and piles of documents and papers stacked haphazardly on one another, a disarray of pens and pencils occupying every available niche, and vials filled with who-knows-what dangerously teetering on the edge).

Hazards lurked at every turn within his office, presenting a far-from-presentable façade that seemingly clashed with his position as the 2nd of the 11th Fatui Harbingers. Yet, one might ponder, does the doctor truly concern himself with such matters?

No, not at all. He doesn't have the time to clean everything or keep them in such an organized state. He simply knows everything is in place, and the mess scarcely holds him back (he hires maids once in a while, when the mess gets too much, and in 1 out of 5 maids he hires only makes it out alive).

Yet, what truly imbued this room with a sense of sanctity? For within these walls, he unearthed his genuine solace and tranquility.

In this space, silence reigned supreme. Isolation was his companion, a cherished serenity he embraced. Here, his thoughts danced, inventions took form, and ideas flowed onto paper alongside intricate equations. Occasionally, he'd pass out on his desk and drool all over his papers. This room stood as a shelter inviolable, reserved solely for those few instances of urgency or the presence of a fellow Harbinger.

All other members of the Fatui instinctively bid their time, patiently awaiting his emergence from the sanctum of his office before venturing to approach him. For within its confines, the Doctor was impervious to disruption. No one disturbs the Doctor.

That was before you came along, of course.

The office, ill-suited for a child of your tender years, harbored a minefield of hazards. Within its walls lay various artifacts, concoctions, and intricate machinery, a perilous realm unfit for the innocent curiosity of youth. Regrettably, your presence inadvertently disrupted the serene harmony that had long enveloped this space, unsettling the Doctor who, by nature, dislikes abrupt shifts and deviations from what he was used to.

When you first arrived in his office (he didn't want you inside of it, after all, he wasn't exactly fond of children, but he had no choice) you were immediately injured after stepping onto a shard of glass that Dottore has completely ignored. You tried your very best not to cry for the sake of not irritating Dottore further, but he wasn't very gentle with your wound either.

He took note of keeping his vials away from the edge of his table.

Then a bunch of books topples over you. He puts them into the shelves now, and you helped him organize by using the Dewey Decimal System, to which you had read from a book.

Then, while he was explaining his recent idea (rather enthusiastically) to you, his hand accidentally slammed against his files and flew straight to your face. You also helped him organize his papers.

And then it was cleaning his desk, offering him DIY pencil holders you've made just for him. You've also invented a mug that prevents the liquid inside from spilling (he thinks it was a rather brilliant invention, he no longer has to worry about spilling on his desk).

And then it was putting his rather precarious possessions somewhere else, outside the vicinity of his office and far away from your grasp.

You were very eager to help him in any way possible, and for a child, you quite enjoyed receiving chores. Yet, your contentment was uncomplicated, drawn from the privilege of being granted entry to his treasure trove of knowledge, replete with a limitless collection of books, materials, and tools.

Dottore always thought that you'd be such a nuisance to him once you entered his office and sully the peace he has always known within his office's enclosed haven.

But he didn't expect to welcome your presence at all, on such short notice, too. (Deep inside, he felt a strange warmth in his chest whenever you'd tug on his coat, asking if he needed any assistance with organizing his office. He wonders what it was, though.)

So, here you were, amidst the symphony of pen strokes etching against paper, a solitary melody resonating within the confines of his office.

Contrary to his expectations, the calmness he believed would dissipate upon your arrival had, in fact, been amplified by leaps and bounds. As he observed from the corner of his eye, you reclined on your stomach, legs swinging idly behind you, immersed in a world of creativity. Strewn across the floor, an assortment of crayons bore testament to your artistic endeavors, while he diligently attended to the papers handed by the Fatui.

Then, as if hesitant to break the comfortable silence, you tried to catch his attention with a soft 'psst!', then covered your mouth with your tiny hand to suppress your childish giggles.

The corners of his lips twitch in irritance amusement as he turns his head toward you, his pen on the desk. You broke into a much bigger grin and held your drawing close to your chest, not wanting to expose it just yet. "Hey, Dotdot!" You whispered to him, and he can't help but roll his eyes smile at the nickname you've given him. "Can I show you what I drew?"

Dottore emitted a contemplative hum as if grappling with the decision of whether to engage or remain absorbed in his thoughts. Your evident impatience manifested in a pout, prompting his response. "Well, fine," He yielded, beckoning you forth. You beamed brightly as you swiftly rose to your feet and bounded toward him, your landing generating a muted grunt from him. A steadying hand rested on the desk, enabling him to regain his composure, after which he settled your giggling form comfortably within the space between his legs. "Now then," He put his hands on your shoulder, "What is it you wished to share?"

With another giggle from your ceaseless childish amusement, you gave him the piece of paper. Big, round eyes sparkling against the light of the room looked up at him expectantly. Dottore received the drawing from you, his gaze lingering over its details, drawn into a moment of shared curiosity and wonder.

It was him, and you, holding hands, depicted with earnest effort and the imaginative touch of your youthful artistry. Around you were a bunch of other versions of him, his segments, though you've only drawn five (since they were the only ones who have interacted with you so far). Each had their names labeled beneath them, but Dottore absolutely adores that you've labeled him as 'Dotdot' instead (you've also drawn Pantalone holding your other hand and labeled him as 'Pants', adorned both figures with encircling hearts).

"Truly remarkable artwork," He stated with a smile, his words accompanied by the sound of your jubilant cheers, "This masterpiece deserves a place of honor, a spot where all can admire it. I can already imagine the joy it will bring to the other segments once they lay eyes on it."

"Really!?"

"Of course, I do believe they enjoy your company, little bunny."

As he carefully set the drawing on his table, your inquisitive gaze caught his attention. With a tilt of your head, a gesture he knew all too well, you asked him a question, "Why do you call me that?"

"Hm? Call you what?" Dottore grabbed you gently and settled you onto his desk. Positioned face to face, at eye level, his intent was clear—to engage with you as both an adult and a child, a balance you seemed to relish.

"Bunny! You call me bunny lots,"

"Oh? Do you not like it?"

You vigorously shook your head, "No no, I love it! I get called nicknames, but they're all mean." You furrow your brow as you reminisced, pouting at the awful memories. But then you broke into a big smile again, "But yours is new and cute! So, why do you call me that?"

Dottore's grin widened, revealing his sharp teeth, a sight that enthralled you. Your hands instinctively moved to his cheeks, your eyes filled with wonder, and he welcomed the touch wholeheartedly. "Ahh, ever so curious, aren't you, little bun?" He teased playfully, giving your nose a gentle boop! with his finger, and your giggles were a delightful response. "You see, I call you bunny because you embody its spirit—small, swift, and an endless source of vibrant energy.

You also love to hop onto people a lot."

"I love giving surprise hugs! I'm too small, so a jump, so I can wrap my arms around them a bit higher!" You huffed as he chuckled at your explanation. "What are you, then? What animal?"

"Oh? I've never thought about what kind of animal I'd be... Hmmm..." Dottore mused for a while, his expression thoughtful. Eventually, he arrived at a decision. "A fox, I think. Crafty, shrewd, and sly. A creature that prowls with a purpose and possesses those distinct, sharp teeth." As he said that, he grins once more to show his sharp teeth, then lunges for your finger, mimicking a bite, prompting you to gasp and pull back with a joyful squeal.

"And speaking of bunnies..." His tone took on a mischievous edge, causing your eyes to widen in anticipation. Suddenly, he swooped in, grabbing your legs and lifting you high into the air. "I might just gobble you up!" Dottore's playful pretense of chomping down on you elicited a cascade of laughter from you. You pushed at his head, trying to escape his 'gobbling' jaws, your legs kicking playfully as you enjoyed the moment.

"I don't think you're a fox, Dotdot!" You quipped, retaking your seat on his desk. Playfully swinging your legs, you mused aloud, a soft humming accompanying your contemplation.

Dottore raised an intrigued eyebrow, "Oh? And what am I in the eyes of my little bunny? Perhaps something more fearsome?" He inquired, looming over you in an effort to intimidate you.

Instead, your eyes lit up brightly, and you joyfully clapped your hands together. "Oh, I've got it! A crow!" You exclaimed with a triumphant smile.

A bemused frown replaced his grin as he processed your unexpected response. "...A crow?" He echoed, clearly puzzled by your choice. "Of all animals?"

And you merely smile at him, giggling at his confused reaction, "Mhm! Yeah! A crow that talks on and on and on." Your hands followed your words, almost hitting him in the face, "A crow that is death and prey over rotting corpses, but a crow that saved me! I thought Dotdot was an angel, but angels don't have black feathers, scary smiles, or red eyes."

Your words painted a vivid picture of your perception, a whimsical and deeply personal perspective on his nature. Dottore nods along, intrigued, as you rambled your thoughts to him, not even chastising you for grabbing the beak of his mask and playing with it.

"You're a crow! You're very smart, and clever, and creative! You're scary to other people, but not to me! I love corvids, I used to feed them bits of animal after I dissect them, and they always bring me something shiny. They were my only friends, and now you're my friend too!"

He doesn't understand the gentle warmth that began to unfurl within his chest as he remained attentive to your words. While unfamiliar, this sensation wasn't entirely unwelcome... "I beg to differ, my dear bunny. I am unmistakably a fox,"

"Then you're a crow pretending to be a fox!" You pout, stubbornly crossing your arms. "I think crows are way cooler than foxes. They can fly! Plus, you can't call yourself a fox when you resemble a crow more than a fox!" You pointed out, a triumphant smirk on your lips.

Well, you do have a point. He does wear a beaked mask, coupled with a bird-like shoulder embellishment bedecked in exquisite black feathers.

"Should I then consider donning attire that better befits a fox?"

At the notion, you fixed him with a mock glare, your cheeks puffing out in an adorable display of discontent. "Nooooo! I prefer Mr. Crow!" you protested with a playful whine, punctuating your words by delivering gentle punches to his shoulders with your tiny hands.

He chuckles at your small tantrum, and he swiftly gathers you into his embrace. Your arms naturally encircled his neck as he rose from his seat, carrying you toward the door, your precious drawing clutched in your hands. "Very well, very well, my dear Mr. Crow it shall remain," He conceded with a playful tone, his steps filled with an easy camaraderie.

Victoriously, you shot him a smug grin, to which he rolled his eyes at.

"Do you wanna know something, Mr. Crow?" You mutter in his ear as he walks past one of his segments.

"Hm? What is it?"

You made sure to whisper it very quietly, hoping the other segments won't hear you. "Between you and me, I think that your younger segments are like rats!"

He didn't know what came over him, he released a hearty, resounding laugh, its volume surprising not just you but also the other segments who happened to be present, each momentarily taken aback by their own affairs. Such an outpouring of mirth was rare for him (only when he was inside his dark, cool lab, alone with experiments).

A sense of pride swelled in your chest as you grinned widely, his laughter infectious as you burst into a fit of giggles. It was a scary laugh, maybe it was just naturally like that, but to you, it sounded very happy. "They bit me once! I was just poking their face."

"Perhaps give them a treat before you approach them," He says, calming down as he continues his trek toward your room. "This gesture might just soften their demeanor."

"What, like cheese?"

"Oh, little bun, that'll drive them even more mad once they found out you called them rats."

You share another grin with him, finding a cozy spot to rest your chin upon his shoulder in contentment, "Good! I think they're funny when their faces turn red."

- ̥۪͙۪˚┊❛❛ If you like this a lot, consider reblogging! I’ll appreciate it very very much! Don’t repost and/or translate my work anywhere. ❜❜ ┊˚ ̥۪͙۪◌

#favoniuslibrary #˚₊໒🔪꒱kai writes₊˚#˚₊໒🩹꒱kai's series:JLM.₊˚#╰┈➤ il dottore #dottore x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #genshin impact #il dottore x reader #platonic genshin x reader #platonic genshin impact #this is my form of mega copium #uhghghg RGAHGHH #i have so many ideas #make it angst #i wanna take care of dottore too tho :(#i want to give dottore an adult figure that cares about him #protip: if ur sad just think of your fav character as your family relative and it doesn't matter if they're older or younger #:)

549 notes · View notes

dtfpeta · 9 months

Text

Domesticity with Price...

(a/n: yes I want to make my lover a home cooked meal. yes I want him to wrap his arms around me while I cook. also I was this close to putting nsfw but I may just make a part two)

tags: husband!price, fluff, mentions of pregnancy, f!reader

Word Count: 1.8k __________

Price who comes home to his doting wife standing in front of the stove. A roaring pot of boiling water being salted by your delicate hands which form a harsh pinch on the granules before releasing them into the porcelain dish.

He watches from the door as you slowly canter your hips, humming along to the soft melody of Al Green from your distant record player. His cheeks contort with a smile when he hears your abysmal attempt to recall the lyrics. Startling you out of your unaware serenade when his hands catch in the fabric of your dress to wrap around your waist.

"Smells good." He comments regarding the dish. His face is buried in the side of your neck, breathing in the scent of garlic, rosemary, and other spices that coat the house in its aroma. Your own fragrance of vanilla overwhelms his senses as he sighs into the crook of your neck.

"It's not nice to sneak up on someone like that..." You chastise, knowing the irony that lies in your statement being as stealth is not something your husband is unaccustomed to. "Could've burned myself." You add, half-heartedly scolding and rolling your eyes as his arms tighten their purchase on your hips.

On the stove lies a pot boiling with its now added component of rigatoni. To its side is a sizzling pan that has been providing the house with its encapsulating smell. John eyes the skillet. The melted butter works to caramelize the now translucent onions coated in sparse flakes of red pepper and rosemary. A wooden spatula wielded in your hand stirs the minced garlic cloves, doing your best to prevent their quick to burn nature.

Price loves your cooking and you love to cook for him. Seeing as his face melts into bliss when he tastes what magic you have cast on something as simple as a chicken pot pie. Or the way his eyes bulge when you reveal that a dish he has been scarfing down like a starved dog over the past several months contains mushrooms.

Ever since that day, he has not once argued about an ingredient in your cooking. Even as he eyes the tomato sauce being added to the pan, knowing he is going to suffer a severe case of heartburn but almost welcoming it, as he knows it will accompany an array of flavors he will be holding up his plate for more of.

"M'sorry love." He relishes. "Been looking forward to this all day. N' watching you from the door just made me miss ya' even more."

You scoff at his cheesy comment, placing your left hand to rest on his forearm that is draped around you as your right stirs at the still hard noodles.

You lay your utensil down and lean back into his embrace. Closing your eyes as you feel your bodies link together like a puzzle. One piece being a head taller than the other, but fitting together nonetheless. You sway with your husband to the tempo of the song playing in the background. His body is warm against your back, being stripped of his tactical gear and left in a black cotton shirt tucked into the waist of his same toned cargo pants, the legs of which are folded above his combat boots.

"How was work?" You ask, eyes still closed and body entangled in him. He regards your question with a low hum, feet lightly stepping side to side.

"Hm, the usual. Told some of the boys we could treat em' to dinner sometime. Be nice to get together, maybe show you off a lil'?"

He lightly pinches at your sides while pulling you closer to him. The scruff of his beard dances against your skin as he attacks your neck in quickly scattered kisses.

"John!" You laugh while attempting to distance yourself from his assault. Only to be swiftly turned around where you find his blue eyes smiling fondly at you. The warm tinted light from a nearby lamp casts soft shadows on the crows feet that crinkle near his eyes. The edges of his smile lines sharpening the more he beams at you.

There's not a place on Earth he would rather be.

For the longest, he distanced himself from love. Only finding that unachievable compromises would be asked of him, and due to his work, he was never able to fulfill those wishes. It only put a strain on his and his partners' relationship. He learned to deal with the lack of intimate companionship over the years. Just having the bond of his brothers in arms till he would return to his empty flat and scrounge up whatever microwaveable dish hadn't gone freezer burnt or remnants of leftovers left in his barren refrigerator. Until he met someone he could incorporate into the unpredictable schedule of his life.

The first time you cooked for him he was floored. Joking about how he'd have to hire you as his personal chef and saying how he could only dream of coming home to this every week. You had brought the ingredients to his apartment, insisting that you would treat him to a hot meal if he helped you, which he gladly agreed to. He stood slicing carrots and celery while you stirred a pot of chicken stock, placing sprigs of thyme and bay leaves into the broth as the chicken roasted in the oven, soon to be shredded and added to the pot. Said pot being three times bigger than your head.

"You trying to feed the whole squadron?" He'd teased. To which you only responded with a light snicker, knowing that in making such a large portion would provide him with leftovers for the rest of the week-and then some.

Several years later you now stood in your shared home, a simple wedding band adorning the both of you two's hands. Price's socks litter the shared space until you have to reprimand him to pick them up. Him responding with his own accusations of how you frequently leave your bra on the couch as well as your adversity to keep your hair ties in one place. What can you say, it's just more convenient when they're around the house.

The two of you's cleaning habits aren't the only thing that could use work though. The decorations are an obvious clash of one person who enhances the space with homely, comforting pieces, and another who has a hard time letting go of secondhand artifacts. And after Price's constant defense of his 'live laugh love' banner hanging on the wall of the kitchen, you began to give in to the cliché relic.

A more than familiar tune begins to play from the record player.

"Oh my God" Price's teeth shine through his grin as he picks up on the melody as well. It's the song you shared your first dance together to.

His coordinated hands move to your hips, your own responding by wrapping around his neck. You gaze up at him. The quickening of your heart makes its frequent appearance as he looks down at you. The butterflies you feel every time you look at him have yet to diminish their strength over the years. Even as you heard stories of the dreaded period following the honeymoon phase where couples do nothing but bicker, your heart remained the same.

The only thing you can focus on is his hickory-toned voice humming to the lyrics of the track. The vibration rumbles through his chest, making its way to your ear resting upon him. He sways with your body against his until you are replicating the dance from that night. Since that night he has always made it apparent you were his first priority. He protects and serves you, as you have brought a peace to his life he didn't think was possible.

"Y'know on my way home," he began "saw this woman with her kid. Maybe 5 years old. He was sitting on a bench while she was on the ground tying his shoe. He was swinging his leg, reading some comic book to her. Poor lasses feet barely touched the ground!" He lets out a breathy laugh before pausing for a moment. "Just got me thinking."

"About?"

"Bein' a dad." He stated, kissing the temple of your face. "Making you a mum."

You smiled into his chest. John knew you wanted kids, and he did too. The time just never found itself convenient. And even now there are uncertainties, but the knowledge you have that John would be an excellent father left you planting seedlings of the idea in his head when you had the chance. Passing by a pair of cute baby shoes in the store. The ring of adolescent laughter when you'd visit the aquarium. Or even a dress you would buy, waiting for your husband to compliment it before mentioning the garment worked as a maternity piece too.

Something had been pulling at his paternal strings lately, however. He yearned to fill the house with the both of your makings. Leaving your marks in its foundation. Whether that be with the rug you both haggled for at the flea market. The broken spring of your living room couch, product of an intense wrestling match between you two. (In which both parties were considered victorious by the end.) Or the poolhouse-toned blue paint that made its acquaintance on the crown molding of your bedroom wall. (Also caused by some spout of play fighting or whatever attempt Price had to get his hands on you.)

You leaned back to search his face, only finding a look of great fondness pulling at his features. Your palms came to cradle the sides of his face before a smile stretched on your own.

"Yeah. I think I'd like that." You brought his lips to yours, embracing him in a tender touch as you laughed into the kiss. Your hold on one another tightened. Knowing that Price was ready to take such a giant step now made you giddy as you imagined him holding his future child, playing make-believe with them, and cleaning up their bumps and bruises from playing in the yard.

"Can't believe you're saying yes to a baby before a dog, John." You both laughed before you turned your head at the smell of burnt garlic.

"Shit!" You quickly grabbed a wooden spoon to stir at the red mixture before turning the stove off.

"Don't tell me you lost your touch already, sweetheart?"

"You were distracting me." You declare, pointing your spatula at the towering man. "Just get the bowls from the cabinet and set the table, yeah?"

"Of course, hun." He mocked.

You glared a burning look into the back of his before he did as instructed, your temper cooling as you poured the pot of soft noodles into a strainer.

You and John were able to turn a house into your home. Soon the floor and walls would be sheathed in memories of your family. One of the first being your dinner of a burnt tomato rigatoni pasta.

#call of duty #john price #captain price x reader #price x reader #john price x reader #price mw2

764 notes · View notes

ervotica · 3 months

Note

Ooh! Ooh! I got a cute one! So we know how Liam makes wood carvings, he’s given the reader one and this time she wants to make one for him as a surprise.. but she’s not the best at it. Literally, she’s got bandages on the tips of her fingers, a couple splinters and cuts— and when he sees that, he’s asking her what happened and she tells him she’s okay and shows the carving to him

pairing; liam mairi x fem!reader

warnings; liam calls reader 'my girl' (it's a warning honestly. i've decided it's his thing now), pure fluff, light descriptions of injury

Thick fingers reach for your hands across the table before you can hastily snatch them away, upturning your smaller ones until your palms are bared before him. Crimson tinged bandages adorn the very tips of your digits, and a shallow slice runs the length of your palm, thin shards of wood lodged just beneath the skin next to it.

"What happened?" Liam's asking, the worry that drips from his cadence only serving to tug at your heartstrings.

"Nothin' bad, Li. Promise." You're quick to reassure him, sore fingers curling around his own to deliver what you hope is a comforting gesture.

"C'mere," he beckons with a playful tap, patting the empty space next to him on the bench until you relent, utterly lovesick and unable to deny him anything he wants. You traverse the length of the table, coming to a halt behind the hulking man, throbbing hands resting on either side of his neck. His pulse thrums under your touch, his natural heat seeping into your pores until you have the urge to climb into his lap and fall asleep. His arm comes up and back to hook round your midriff, pulling your chest flush to his back in one swift motion.

"Sit," he teases.

You press pursed lips to his temple for a chaste kiss before peeling yourself away, needling beneath his arm and into his side; you fit like the piece of a puzzle, like it's where you've always been. You have, really.

"You gonna tell me what happened, my girl?"

You worry your bottom lip between your teeth, tilting your head to gaze up at him through your lashes.

"You know you made me that wood carving?" you ask, more meek than you'd expected your voice to come out. You busy yourself picking at your cuticles.

"Yeah?" he singsongs.

"Well..." Your bottom lip spills into a pout. It's unlike you to be so shy - Liam's terribly endeared. "I wanted to make you one of Deigh. It's a lot harder than it looks, and it's not very good, really. But..." Your hand disappears into your pocket and the fabric rustles with the sudden movement; then your closed fist emerges, clutching a mildly haphazard wood carving of Deigh. It's a little wonky in places, lines not as smooth and clean as Liam always manages to get them.

He thinks it's utterly perfect.

Taking the carving from your curled fingers, he smooths a thumb over the little dragon's face, crows feet crinkling affectionately. His dimple craters into the middle of his cheek with a beaming smile, and his forearm draws tight, anchoring you to his chest and folding you into his embrace.

"It's perfect. I love it, angel. Thank you."

"You really like it?" you ask, a warmth blooming and spreading in your chest even as uncertainty drips from your cadence.

"How could I not, hm? It's beautiful."

Your chin tips up to smack a wet kiss against the sharp angle of his jaw, arms twining around the broad expanse of his waist.

"You gettin' shy on me?" Liam mocks lightheartedly. You scoff, brows drawing down and pushing a crease between your eyes which Liam promptly smooths over. "I love you," he coos, pressing his temple to the top of your head. Heat rushes through you, white-hot and surprisingly pleasant.

"I love you, too."

192 notes · View notes

forbidden-sunlight · 1 year

Text

False Garden of Eden [yandere!various!csm x stoic!reader]

Credit goes to @hana-no-seiiki for inspiring and collaborating with me to write this piece that is based off their current CSM series Chainsaw and Happiness Pillbox [link to story is here!] and @lyomeii for proofreading/editing, especially with that one I was stuck on lol :)

The intention of this story is for entertainment purposes only, it is not my personal belief(s). The behavior exhibited here is inappropriate and unhealthy, hence it should not be encouraged. There are also triggers, so please take caution. You are responsible for your Internet consumption!

Content and Trigger Warnings: Obsessive Behavior, Strong Language, Gaslighting, Stalking, Toxic Relationships, Toxic Behavior.

Humanity disgusted you.

For all their philosophical talk on the importance of imperfections and cherishing all life around them, their greed knew no bounds. Even when they had a roof over their heads or a warm meal in their bellies or hadn’t had their lives cut short by disaster, they wanted more. More, more, more. You knew it was only a matter of time before their mistakes became their undoing….but why did your husband love these pitiful creatures like an owner fawning over their precious dog? It baffled you. But to her credit, Makima was quite good at that; a great manipulator who lured others into Public Safety when they were at their lowest, and those who defied her commands would be on their knees, begging for mercy. Just like what she had done to you all of those years ago.

The chains she had coiled around your body was a contract of fidelity; a marriage, a vow to love and protect each until ‘death do us part’. In her terms, ‘love’ meant being an obedient wife who should kiss or embrace their weary husband after a troublesome day at work, and vice versa. Obviously, Makima referred to herself as the husband. It was her right as the ancient, powerful Control Devil to protect the pitiful Dreaming Devil. This unfortunate person was you, of course.

Sighing, you hoisted yourself up from the ground with gloved hands on your knees, using one to wipe the sweat on your brow before glancing around the valley. This area had been protected for the last century from being demolished and turned into a condominium because it was within the jurisdiction of a shrine outside Tokyo. And for the last century, it has served as a secret place for you to escape the city and remove yourself from the mask of a devil hunter in the Intelligence sector.

To bask in the solitude of nature for a few glorious hours before returning to the home that you shared with Makima. The priest did not mind if you planted seeds for a small garden, so long as you did not do anything to anger the gods’ resting place. A small price to pay for a ‘contract’ that allowed you to have freedom. In the time you have found this place, the small garden became a chaotic, lush area. And you would not have it any other way…except perhaps not two crows that you knew were under Makima’s control.

It was her way of respecting your privacy with a little….surveillance. You repaid such kindness by flipping up your middle finger and blowing a raspberry.

Yet despite the feeling of tranquility that flows over your stressed body, to be able to inhale the air in your lungs and just breath from the leash she had around your collar you knew deep down that this is not true freedom. Aware and you wanted more than just a garden to be free. You wanted to leave Tokyo and never come back. To go to some hidden corner of the world where no one, not even Makima, would even dream to think you would go.

You frowned. Wonderful. Now you felt like a hypocrite because of your excessive greed for freedom. Because without this garden, you knew you would have gone insane much sooner than your current mindset, being slowly and meticulously chipped away by Makima’s machinations until her focus reverted to Denji.

The boy who was a shell to the Chainsaw Devil. Her idol, the Hero of Hell. He was everything to Makima….but to you, he was dangerous. As the Dreaming Devil, you were both a strong and weak devil. You thrived on the fear from the poor souls who were trapped in the illusion of their worst nightmares - a tactic that your husband has used on more than one occasion in an interrogation with a stubborn suspect - and yet with dreams themselves, pure and impure, they made you weak. Since Denji’s mindscape was full of these dreams, he was less than an ideal partner to be around when devil hunting. Especially since Makima had every intention of using you as an incentive for the kid and ensuring his absolute obedience towards Public Safety.

So why didn’t it bother you as much as you thought it should? Did it have something to do with the Chainsaw Devil himself? Or were you just being stupid?

More importantly, why the fuck did Makima have to bring him home, of all the dogs she could have possibly selected? She knows how dangerous the Chainsaw Devil is. If the ‘dog’ had been another Hayakawa Aki, then there wouldn’t have been too many issues.

Well-known asshole and a competent Public Safety official, at least Aki knew when to stand down, or at the very least be much more aware of the situation than Denji was.

You still did not understand why his face always turned red when he was within your vicinity. Humans had weaker immune systems than devils, so he could just be sickly from making too many contracts than the average hunter.

Still doesn’t explain why you would run into him even though you never tell anyone where you’d be in the city. Even Denji would just so happen to be nearby when he ran up to greet you like an enthusiastic mutt.

Shaking your head, you resumed your work in the garden. Once weeding had been finished and some of the bushes trimmed, the skies began to transmute into a dark blueish color, overriding the reddish-orange hues of the remaining daylight. Ah. You have been here too long. It was time to go. Back to the cage that was a ‘home’ to Makima and her dogs.

Fumbling around in your pants pocket, your deft fingers removed a glass vial filled with sand. Pulling up the cork, you shook out the sand and murmured under your breath, allowing it to engulf your body in a vortex and teleport you approximately half a block from the condominium.

It wasn’t hard to see why the Dreaming Devil was also known as the Sandman to the humans who feared them so.

Wiping off some of the dirt on your shoulders and pants, the Dreaming Devil who craved freedom was gone, and in its place was a stoic human who worked under the Public Safety’s Intelligence sector, [First Name] [Last Name].

When she got off of the elevator on the third floor, Makima smiled. Ah, her wife was finally home from gardening and had dinner almost ready. She hadn’t intended to stay at the office until late, but Denji needed an extra incentive. Or would it be considered a punishment to fondle his superior’s chest when it was obvious that he’s lusting after her spouse?

She blinked for a moment, then shook her head. Well, either way, he was motivated to kill the Gun Devil. Promising a puppy that he’d get anything he wanted in exchange for destroying an enemy was effective. She briskly walked down the carpeted hall and towards a door with 307 etched in golden lettering. With a quick turn of the key, she stepped into the hallway and was immediately bombarded by her precious pups.

Makima gave a short laugh, her grin widening as she gave each of them a good scratch behind the ears. “Yes, Custard, Papa is home. Were you good for Mother today? I hope you were too, Tiramisu, or no special treat for you tonight. The same goes for you, Strawberry! Don’t think Mother did not tell me about how you tried to chew up the television remote again! You know that isn’t a toy.”

Once all of her precious children were given affection, she walked into the kitchen and saw her sweet spouse standing in the kitchen cleaning the dirty dishes. Makima glanced over at the dining room table and saw that everything had just been plated. Miso soup, grilled fish with rice, and boiled veggies. A typical Japanese staple, minus the wine glasses filled with a visceral red she was all too familiar with.

Although devils did not need human food to sustain their appetite, Makima truly appreciated the time and effort her wife had put into planning the meals they shared. Especially acquiring blood without tipping off any of the other tenants. Yet what caught her attention was [First Name]’s shoulders. She was shivering. Did she forget to put on a sweater after taking a shower?

Goodness, she was a forgetful one, wasn’t she?

But that’s all right. This is why the Dreaming Devil had a reliable husband to look after her well-being.

“Is everything all right?” Makima asked as she approached [First Name] from behind, wrapping her hands around her spouse and resting her chin on the devil’s shoulders. “It isn’t very cold in the apartment? Did you spend too much time outside again?”

[First Name] did not answer. Instead she kept scrubbing dishes in the sink with a soapy sponge, hot water spewing from the faucet. Yellow orbs widened slightly as realization hit Makima.

Ah. Is she afraid that something bad happened at work earlier today and she’d be punished for it? Silly, silly spouse.

“If you’re waiting on something, don’t worry.” Makima felt [First Name]’s body quiver even more when she tightened her grip on her spouse’s middle. “I love you very much, [First Name], and would never allow anything or anyone to hurt you. No one will ever lay a finger on you but me.”

Denji...and Aki....they might look at her wife but they will never lay a hand on her. Although she has been a good girl and never interacted with anyone except for the cashiers at the grocery store they will never stop covering what they desire the person who is hers by divine right.

Taglist

@hana-no-seiiki

@lyomeii

445 notes · View notes

bonefall · 4 months

Note

Don’t know if this is the right place to ask, but could you talk more about zoos? I’ve seen many people say that zoos are inherently exploitative and that we should instead focus on advocating for wildlife preserves, etc., but I’m not sure what to think of that. You seem to know a lot about wildlife protection, so what’s your opinion on this?

There are folks faaaar better than myself to talk about the issues of zoos specifically and I'll try to toss in some sources so you can go and learn more, but let me try and explain my mindset here.

Summary of my opinion on this: BOTH of these things can be poorly managed, and I broadly support both. They should exist in tandem. I am pro-accredited zoo and am extremely sensitive towards misinformation. I also do think the best place for animals to be is in their natural environment, but nature "preserves" aren't inherently perfect. They can also be prone to the capitalist (and colonialist) pressures that less informed people believe they're somehow immune to.

Because of the goal of my project being to make the setting of WC accurate to Northwestern England, my research is based on UK laws, ecology, and conservation programs.

On Zoos

On Nature Reserves

An Aside on Fortress Conservation

On Zoos

The legal definition of a Zoo in the UK (because that is what BB's ecological education is based around), as defined by the Zoo Licensing Act of 1981 (ZLA), is a "place where wild animals are kept for exhibition to the public," excluding circuses and pet shops (which are covered by different laws.)

This applies equally to private, for-profit zoos, as well as zoos run by wildlife charities and conservation organizations. Profit does not define a zoo. If there's a place trying to tell you it's not a zoo but a "sanctuary" or a "wildlife park," but you can still go visit and see captive wild animals, even if it's totally free, it's a marketing trick. Legally that is still a zoo in the UK.

(for fellow Americans; OUR definition is broader, more patchwork because we are 50 little countries in a trenchcoat, and can include collections of animals not displayed to the public.)

That said, there's a HUGE difference between Chester Zoo, run by the North of England Zoological Society, which personally holds the studbooks for maintaining the genetic diversity of 10 endangered species, has 134 captive breeding projects, cultivates 265 threatened plant species, and sends its members as consultants to United Nations conferences on climate change, and Sam Tiddles' Personal Zebra Pit.

Sam Tiddles' Personal Zebra Pit ONLY has to worry about the UK government. There's another standard zoos can hold themselves to if they want to get serious about conservation like Chester Zoo; Accreditation. There are two major zoo organizations in the UK, BIAZA and EAZA.

(Americans may wonder about AZA; that's ours. AZA, EAZA, and BIAZA are all members of the World Association of Aquariums and Zoos, or WAZA, but they are all individual organizations.)

A zoo going for EAZA's "accreditation" has to undergo an entire year of evaluation to make sure they fit the strict standards, and renewal is ongoing. You don't just earn it once. You have to keep your animal welfare up-to-date and in compliance or you will lose it.

The benefit of joining with an accredited org is that it puts the zoo into a huge network of other organizations. They work together for various conservation efforts.

There are DOZENS of species that were prevented from going extinct, and are being reintroduced back to their habitats, because of the work done by zoos. The scimitar-horned oryx, takhi, California condor, the Galapagos tortoise, etc. Some of these WERE extinct in the wild and wouldn't BE here if it hadn't been for zoos!

The San Diego zoo is preventing the last remaining hawaiian crows from embracing oblivion right now, a species for which SO LITTLE of its wild behavior is known they had to write the book on caring for them, and Chester zoo worked in tandem with the Uganda Wildlife Authority to provide tech and funding towards breakthroughs in surveying wild pangolins.

Don't get me wrong;

MOST zoos are not accredited,

nor is accreditation is REQUIRED to make a good zoo,

nor does it automatically PROVE nothing bad has happened in the zoo,

There are a lot more Sam Tiddles' Personal Zebra Pits than there are Chester Zoos.

That's worth talking about! We SHOULD be having conversations on things like,

Is it appropriate to keep and breed difficult, social megafauna, like elephants or cetaceans? What does the data say? Are there any circumstances where that would be okay, IF the data does confirm we can never provide enough space or stimulation to perfectly meet those species' needs?

How can we improve animal welfare for private zoos? Should we tighten up regulations on who can start or run one (yes)? Are there enough inspectors (no)?

Do those smaller zoos meaningfully contribute to better conservation? How do we know if they are properly educating their visitors? Can we prove this one way or the other?

Who watches the watchmen? Accreditation societies hold themselves accountable. Do these organizations truly have enough transparency?

(I don't agree with Born Free's ultimate conclusion that we should "phase out" zoos, but you should always understand the opposing arguments)

But bottom line of my opinion is; Good zoos are deeply important, and they have a tangible benefit to wildlife conservation. Anyone who tries to tell you that "zoos are inherently unethical" either knows very little about zoos or real conservation work, or... is hiding some deeper, more batshit take, like "having wild animals in any kind of captivity is unlawful imprisonment."

(you'll also get a lot more work done in regulating the exotic animal trade in the UK if you go after private owners, btw. zoos have nothing to do with how lax those laws are.)

Anyway I'm a funny cat blog about battle kitties, and the stuff I do for BB is to educate about the ecosystem of Northern England. If you want to know more about zoos, debunking misconceptions, and critiques from someone with more personal experience, go talk to @why-animals-do-the-thing!

Keep in mind though, again, they talk about American zoos, where this post was written with the UK in mind.

(and even then, England specifically. ALL UK members and also the Isle of Man have differences in their laws.)

(If anyone has other zoo education tumblr blogs in mind, especially if they are European, lmk and I'll edit this post)

On Nature Reserves

Remember how broad the legal definition of a zoo actually was? Same thing over here. A "nature reserve" in the UK is a broad, unofficial generic term for several things. It doesn't inherently involve statutory protection, either, meaning there's some situations where there's no laws to hold anyone accountable for damage

These are the "nature reserve" types relevant to my project; (NOTE: Ramsar sites, SACs, and SPAs are EU-related and honestly, I do not know how Brexit has effected them, if at all, so I won't be explaining something I don't understand.)

Local Wildlife Site (LWS) Selected via scientific survey and managed locally, connecting wildlife habitats together and keeping nature close to home. VERY important... and yet, incredibly prone to destruction because there aren't good reporting processes in place. Whenever a report comes out every few years, the Wildlife Trust says it often only gets data for 15% of all their registered sites, and 12% get destroyed in that timeframe.

Local Nature Reserve (LNR) A site that can be declared by a district or county council, if proven to have geographic, educational, biodiversity, or recreational value. The local authority manages this, BUT, the landowner can remain in control of the property and "lease" it out (and boy oh boy, landowners do some RIDICULOUS things)

National Nature Reserve (NNR) This is probably closest to what you think of when someone says "nature reserve." Designated by Natural England to protect significant habitat ranges and geographic formations, but still usually operates in tandem with private land owners who must get consent if they want to do something potentially damaging to the NNR.

Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) (pronounced Triple S-I) A conservation designation for a particular place, assessed and defined by Natural England for its biological or geographic significance. SSSIs are protected areas, and often become the basis for NNRs, LNRs, Ramsar sites, SACs, SPAs, etc.

So you probably noticed that 3/4 of those needed to have the private ownership problem mentioned right in the summary, and it doesn't end there. Even fully government-managed NNRs and SSSIs work with the private sectors of forestry, tourism, and recreation.

We live under Capitalism; EVERYTHING has a profit motive, not just zoos.

I brushed over some of those factors in my Moorland Research Notes and DESPERATELY tried to stay succinct with them, but it was hard. The things that can happen to skirt around the UK's laws protecting wildlife could make an entire season of Monty Python sketches.

Protestors can angrily oppose felling silver birch (a "weed" in this context which can change the ecosystem) because it made a hike less 'pretty' and they don't understand heath management.

Management can be reluctant to ban dogs and horses for fear of backlash, even as they turn heath to sward before our eyes.

Reserves can be owned by Count Bloodsnurt who thinks crashing through the forest with a pack of dogs to exhaust an animal to death is a profitable traditional British passtime.

Or you can literally just pretend that you accidentally chased a deer for several hours and then killed it while innocently sending your baying hounds down a trail. (NOTE: I am pro-hunting, but not pro-animal cruelty.)

The Forestry Commission can slobber enthusiastically while replacing endangered wildlife habitats with non-native, invasive sitka spruce plantations, pretending most trees are equal while conveniently prioritizing profitable timber species.

I have STORIES to tell about the absolute Looney Tunes bullshit that's going on between conservationists and rich assholes who want to sell grouse hunting access, but I'll leave it at this fascinating tidbit about air guns and mannequins which are "totally, absolutely there for no nefarious reason at all, certainly not to prevent marsh harriers from nesting in an area where they also keep winding up mysteriously killed in illegal snares, no no no"

BUT. Since Nature Reserve isn't a hard defined legal concept, and any organization could get involved in local conservation in the UK, and just about anyone or anything could own one... IT'S CHESTER ZOO WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!!

They received a grant in 2021 to restore habitat to a stretch of 10 miles extending outside of their borders, working with TONS of other entities such as local government and conservation charities in the process. There's now 6,000 square meters of restored meadow, an orchard, new ponds, and maintained reedbeds, because of them.

It isn't just Chester Zoo, either. It's all over the UK. Durrel Wildlife, which runs Jersey Zoo, just acquired 18,500 acres to rewild in Perthshire. Citizen Zoo is working with the Beaver Trust to bring beavers back to London and is always looking for volunteers to help with their river projects, and the Edinburgh Zoo is equipped with gene labs being used to monitor and analyze the remaining populations of non-hybrid Scottish Wildcats.

The point being,

Nature preserves have problems too. They are not magical fairy kingdoms that you put up a fence around and then declare you Saved Nature Hooray! They need to be protected. They need to be continuously assessed. They are prone to capitalist pressures just like everything else on this hell planet. Go talk to my boy Karl he'll give you a hug about it.

"Nature Preserves" are NOT an "alternative" to zoos and vice versa. They do not do the same thing. A zoo is a center of education and wildlife research which displays exotic animals. A nature preserve is a parcel of native ecosystem. We need LOTS of nature preserves and we need them well-managed ASAP.

We could never just "replace" zoos with nature preserves, and we're nowhere near the amount of protected ecosystem space to start thinking of scaling back animals in captivity. Until King Arthur comes out of hibernation to save Britain, that's the world we live in.

An Aside

My project and my research is based on the isle of Great Britain. The more I learn about the ecosystems that are naturally found there, the more venomously I reject the old lie, "humans are a blight."

YOU are an animal. You're a big one, too. You know what the role of big animals in an ecosystem are? Change. Elephants knock over trees, wolves alter the course of rivers, bison fertilize the plains from coast-to-coast. In Great Britain, that's what hominids have done for 900,000 years, their populations ebbing and flowing with every ice age.

Early farming created the moors and grazing sheep and cattle maintain it, hosting hundreds of specialist species. Every old-growth forest has signs of ancient coppicing and pollarding, which create havens for wildlife when well-managed. Corn cockle evolved as a mimic of wheat seeds, so farmers would plant it over and over within their fields.

This garbage idea that humans are somehow "separate" from or "above" nature is poison. It's not true ANYWHERE.

It contributes to an idea that our very presence is somehow damaging to natural spaces, and to "protect" it, we have to completely leave it alone. NO! Absolutely NOT! There are places where we have to limit harvesting and foot traffic, but humans ALWAYS lived in nature.

Even the ecosystems that this mindset comes from rejects it, but this shit doesn't JUST get applied to British people who become alienated and disconnected from their surroundings to the point where they don't know what silver birch does.

It's DEADLY for the indigenous people who protect 80% of our most important ecosystems.

It's a weapon against the Maasai people, stopped from hunting or growing crops on their own land. It's violence for 9 San hunters shot at by a helicopter with a "kill poachers on-sight" policy, as one of the world's LARGEST diamond mines operates in the same motherfucking park. The Havasupai people are kept out of the Grand Canyon that they managed for generations because they might "collect too many nuts" and starve squirrels, Dukha reindeer herders suddenly get banned from chopping wood or fishing, and watch wolves decimate their animals in the absence of their herding dogs.

It's nightmare after nightmare of human displacement in the name of "conservation."

That all ties back to that mindset. This idea that nature is pure, "pristine," and should be totally untouched. There are some starting to call it Fortress Conservation.

You can't begin to understand the criticisms of modern conservation without acknowledging that we are still living under the influence of capitalism and colonialism. Those who fixate on speaking for "animals/nature/trees who don't have a voice" often seem to have no interest in the indigenous people who do.

Listen. There's no simple answer; and the solution will vary for each region.

Again, my project is within the UK, one of the most ecologically devastated areas in the world. There are bad zoos that the law allows a pass. There are incredible zoos that are vital to conservation, in and outside of the country. There's not enough nature preserves. The best ones that exist are often exploited for profit.

I hope that my silly little blog sparks an interest in a handful of people to understand more about their own local ecosystems, and teaches folks about the unique beauty even within a place as "boring" as England.

But, my straightforward statement is that I have no patience for nonconstructive, broad zoo slander that lumps together ALL of them, and open contempt for anyone who tries to sell nature preserves like a perfect, morally superior "alternative." We need them BOTH right now, and we need to acknowledge that zoos AND preserves have legal and ethical issues that aren't openly talked about.

#ALSO THAT GUIDE IVE BEEN WORKING ON IS DONE #Im just waiting for the input of the sensitivity readers bc I made a whole section on--#How ableis m might express in the different clans #And part of it became a thunder-callout post lmaooooo #Also this zoo doc has been sitting competed in my drafts for a while #All this to say that uh. I hope the strange place they visit in the upcoming se is not a zoo :J #I will hit it with a golf club if it is <3 #Leaning heavily towards the 'oh no two DEMIGODS ended up in a zoo' idea #Which is objectively funnier #And you know what else is objectively funny. When these posts break orbit and then ppl are surprised that i am a kitty cat blog #Hal. It's about Cats.#Bone Babble

97 notes · View notes

aconflagrationofmyown · 7 months

Text

Patch It Up Baby

A Sarge and lil Mama fic

Summary: It’s 1977 and Jesse Presley has never loved his family more or had more chances to prove it. When America’s last dynasty implodes, it‘s up to the Presley heir to mend and rebuild what’s left. His first and least glamorous commission is to take his little sister Daisy Mae to rehab in Texas after she embraced their daddy’s rock n’ roll lifestyle a little too thoroughly. In the great game-plan of getting mama and daddy back together, keeping up appearances and bolstering up his siblings’ spirits, what Jesse doesn’t expect is Donna. Just…Donna.

Warnings: mentions of past hard drug use, mentions of withdrawls, a brief but recounted callous comment encouraging death, children dealing with parent’s divorce, publicity of said divorce, paparazzi stalking, a panic attack, Jesse being a bit hardcore like his father to a stalker and mentions of his previous violence, brief sexual scene and occasional mentions of sex.

My thanks to all the dears who helped me so much with this, who added their lines to this and aided in the plot, @prompted-wordsmith @elvisabutler @stylespresleyhearted @ab4eva @butlersxbirdy @eliseinmemphis to mention a wee few

NOTE: In this chapter the baby that is referenced as growing inside Elaine was conceived during Elvis and Elaine’s divorce, and ends up being Danny. Jesse refers to his upcoming sibling as a “last” and “surprise” baby, which he was. However he was neither the last nor the only surprise for Elaine and Elvis. Danny came and a few years later was followed by Shiloh. So uh, that means better times must be around the bend, right? But of course, Jesse wouldn’t know that. ;)

2nd Generation Refresher: as this is out of order and missing many key pieces, I understand it may not make perfect sense yet but I hope y’all enjoy getting a glimpse into the family later on. You’ll meet Elvis and Elaine over the phone and the older kids as they grow into their maturity. Everyone is a bit spread out in their different pursuits in this one compared to the last one shot when it was all young, familial domestic chaos, but there’s little updates in here I think y’all will enjoy. Xoxo

Jesse’s long and ringed forefinger pecks peevishly at the Rehab Center’s grimy rotary dial. He waits for the phone connection to be made with studied nonchalance, leaning casually against the bleach white wall in a tiny alcove, checking like a studied dandy for dirt under his nails. It’s a photogenic sorta lean, one boot crossed over the other and bell bottoms flaring in a way that naturally carries the eye to the belt buckle at his tapered waist.

Daddy taught him well enough how to cut a figure, and daddy was the reason why Jesse had any need to pretend nonchalance when calling home.

Home, he wants to scoff.

Not Graceland while this fiasco lasted.

Graceland was too storied and way too watched. Home was Palm Springs and warm weather and privacy to figure out what the hell the rest of them were gonna do with their lives and if mama and daddy could still make it. Together.

Home, where mama could cook this last little one that precious few in the outside world knew was coming, home where daddy could eat crow and stay sober.

Jesse’s teeth ache from the way he grinds them in his stress, he rubs at his cheek and wills the tenseness away, if he answered with clenched teeth mama would be able to tell. And mama would worry. And mama had done enough worrying to nearly cost her her life.

“Hello?” came through the receiver.

Jesse felt guilty for one brief second at his immense relief that she’d been the one to answer, not daddy, but then a flood of very legitimate grievances against one Elvis Presley came flooding in and he shrugged it off. “Hey mama.” he kept his voice down but he couldn’t help the smile that lifted his tone at just hearing her sound so soft and rested. “How’re you doin’?” he ventured, keeping an eye at the nurses and patients passing nearby, always aware of potential eavesdroppers.

“I’m good baby, I’m real good, how’re you holdin’ up?”

Jesse listens for any trace of a fib in her tone but for once she doesn’t sound strained when she says she’s good. He’ll take it that physically she must be finally good for the first time this whole pregnancy. “Thas good.” he whispers, cupping the receiver closer, “He takin’ care of you, mama? He’s being gentle a-and he’s -he bein’ respectful?”

Of her space and her nerves and her whole taken for granted self. He’s picked a cuticle till it’s bleeding on him, wincing he sticks it into his mouth, full lips curling around it, something his mama gave him in a face strikingly similar to his father’s. The scowl he sends at a lurking relation of some inmate in this druggie bedlam is entirely his father’s and he’s grateful for that one singular legacy. It’s come in real handy as folks come up to him and pepper him with questions on the football field like:

-is your dad strung out on coke or heroin these days? is it true what happened to your sister, man? did your daddy force himself or is your mama so pathetic she couldn’t say no to a man she was divorcin? got anythin’ I can trade off ya, Presley?-

Benign, regular family questions. Sorta questions most 20 year olds have gotta answer, for sure. He sucks harder and tastes copper round his finger.

“Oh yes. Really darling, I’m fine. We’re fine, in fact.” Mama’s talking again. That’s a bold statement. To refer to them as “we” and to say they’re fine. She’s not mean enough to lie to him now, not now it’s all crashed and crumbled and they’re trying to pick up the pieces together. His little cupcake world of happy families is sorta shot to hell by this point, anyways. Least Mama can do is be truthful about it, and learning from his daddy’s mistakes, Jesse chooses to believe her when she says she’s well.

That they’re good.

“Ok, good.” he breathes for what he realizes must be the first time in awhile, his fingers are numb and his lips feel tingly, he’s gotta stop doing that, he’s gonna pass out one day, he can feel it. “The baby?”

“Fine. We’re all fine, Butnin, I asked how you were.” she reminds him gently.

“I’m fine, mama.” he is, now that he’s back to breathing. Breathing is good for one’s health. He’s gonna keep it up. “Daisy is settling in alright, too.” he beats Mama to the question, glossing over some of the more queasy aspects of heroin rehabilitation. “T-the nurse here, uh, D-Donna, she uh, she said we oughta be over the worst of it. The uh, initial withdrawls and such.”

“Was it bad, Jesse?” poor mama, how’d it come to this that she has to ask it.

“Yeah, fairly.” he admits, recalling his baby sister’s foaming mouth and dilated eyes and seizing throat. Holding her as she scratched at herself like a maniac, forced her to tear at him instead. Donna, the nurse, has got him fixed up with plasters all up and down his forearms and hands. “But that part’s worn off.” he assumes mama knows what he means, if she hasn’t dealt with it directly with daddy she at least knows of it, even if his were all prescribed. “She’s just real sleepy now. Sleeps all day and most the night. I try to keep her talking and singing and playing stuff so, uh, so that she’s tired, ya know? So she’ll sleep heavy. She’ll get better quicker. That’s what Donna says, the more she sleeps the faster she’ll detox.”

“My sweet boy.” Mama murmurs and that’s compensation enough for how little sleep he’s gotten this past week and everything else.

“Happy to do it.” he mumbles, and he means it.

“I know,” she answers earnestly, “and we’re grateful.” they both let that lie and after a minute she speaks up again, a saucy undercurrent to her tone that throws him for a loop. It's been such ages since he heard it: “So, this Donna, you’ve mentioned her last time and before that, too. Is she an experienced nurse, dear?”

Jesse groans into his hand only to realize it’s amplifying the sound through the speaker. In his loneliness here he may have forgotten how obvious it is that he’s latched on like a limpet to the one genuine human who’ll give him something besides canned answers when his sister aspirates on her own spit in the bathroom floor.

“I-I-I lost one sister this way already.” he’d gasped to sweet little Donna and her baby cheeked self as they peeled Daisy off the floor and got her on a stretcher, “Jo, Jo died from this.”

Not a drug withdrawal, of course. Jo had drowned inside mama. But still.

-Aspirating.

It held a bizarre terror for him, that fancy word, his whole childhood and the whole nine months of waiting for Marie to come out healthy. He’d never forget asking his daddy one day at table how they could be sure this new baby wouldn’t drown, too. Daddy had gotten so angry before bursting into tears at the head of the table. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before or since. All that grief just stored up, and him scared as any of them for a repeat and no kid’s tactless inquiry and it all surface. “We don’t know.” Mama had said and daddy cut her off harshly, “No, Elaine!” he’d near yelled, “No, don’t even say it. This one’s gonna live, I'm demandin’ it.” Mama had bit her lip and replied softly, “Then we’d better start praying so.”

And that’s what they did every night for eight months, Daddy led them all in laying their hands on mama's growing belly and prayed and prayed until Marie came screaming into the world with clear lungs. And so Jesse got himself on the floor and beat at Daisy’s back while praying and Donna did it too, right with him.

“Uh, Donna’s pretty young but she’s capable.” he answers mama’s question.

“How old?” there’s nothing sly in her tone now, just genuine concern for the quality of her daughter’s care takers.

“She’s nineteen, mama,” Jesse admits with a wince, “she’s my age.”

“Ah.” and a long pause follows.

“There’s others too, but she’s the most eager, most -caring.”

“That’s good. Thank God he sent someone for y’all. I knew He would.”

“Yeah, she’s, she’s real sweet mama.” he assures.

“Oh is she?” there’s a smirk in her tone now.

“Nineteen and sweet.” that’s daddy’s voice coming through the phone from a distance and Jesse starts to stiffen. “Does this Donna happen to be pretty, too, son?”

Jesse is back to grinding his teeth and it sends a spark of pain up to his temple.

“Elvis!” His mama honest to god titters and it’s been such a while since Jesse heard that sound he suddenly feels like forgiving his daddy a few things just for that. Just for bringing that back. It makes his eyes sting.

Donna has hair the color of mamas but with a touch more red in it and it curls and fans in such a messy and unstudied way as to remind him of an artist, all while smashed beneath a nurse's cap. And her smile is sunshine incarnate and her eyes are as blue as his and her lips as plump as strawberries and she’s the first person he feels like he can trust in ages. Not that he’s trusted her with much besides showing he’s at the end of his rope with exhaustion and emotion. But she never missed a beat.

“I-I-I don’t mean to keep mentioning her it’s just-“ he bites his lip harshly before deciding to be frank, “it’s hard to trust anyone. Even here everyone is gossiping about us, they think I can’t hear ‘em but I do and it’s all the time and I ain’t going up to one of those tongue wags and asking them to help Daisy when she’s that vulnerable. I just can’t. So -so it’s Donna.” he explains.

It’s dead silent on the other end for a length of time that oughta be uncomfortable but instead it soothes something in Jesse’s soul to think that he got his point across enough to shut his smartass father up for a whole minute.

“I’m sorry this is so damn hard for you, son,” it comes in a deep rumble and bitter as he is, Jesse feels his hands sweat and his cheeks too, or else that sting has overflowed and he’s crying. In public. “I’m sorry you’re havin’ to pay for my sins.”

“I-I-I’m just glad you’re back.” he croaks and looks about the place frantically to make sure he’s unobserved.

It had been so good that day daddy walked through the threshold at Graceland looking twenty pounds lighter and stone cold sober, there to sort out his children, there to intervene for Daisy. The day mama’s body gave out on her and she puddled like so much water on Graceland’s foyer floor, as if her body trusted Elvis to take care of her family even if her mind wasn’t sure he’d forgiven her for the divorce. Daddy had been perfect that day, picked mama up like a baby and took her to the hospital, made press statements like a ordinary human sayin simply that he’d “jacked it all up and was here to make amends.”

Mama and him tucked off to California to grow that baby that made her faint and Jesse was charged with Daisy and bringing her here to Dallas. It had felt like old times, Sergeant Presley and all that famous stage presence ordering them all to battle stations.

It wasn’t till later that Jesse wondered how the hell the man had the gall to show up and demand respect. Turns out mama had kept that fire going bright enough all the kids just fell in line like nothing had ever been askew. Jesse wonders if now he can go back to being nineteen again. He’s a little scared to hope. That’s the worst of it, he’s not bitter, he’s scared.

Twenty year olds have futures with little nurses named Donna. For now Jesse is not a normal almost-twenty year old.

“I’m glad you’re back.” he repeats to his daddy, “Please…stay…back.”

It’s what he begs Daisy when she tries to bribe him to sneak her illegal shit next morning.

“Enough of that, you’re nearly sober and you’re gonna stay sober. Please stay good, f’me! Please.” he begs and weedles until her big blue eyes go from watery to scornful and she has fun at his pathetic expense but Jesse doesn’t mind. It gives her something to do, teasing him for being a blubbering softy over her. It distracts her. It assures Daisy she’s wanted, that somebody -more than one in fact- would be devastated if she didn’t win this fight.

She’s become a skeleton as the detox racks her. Hospital food tasting bad on a good appetite, it’s ever worse on a poor one and Jesse tears out clumps of his now shaggy black hair in desperation to have her stay nourished. He’s not supposed to be sleeping there overnight but Donna fibs for him. He’s not supposed to sneak shit into the clinic but Donna takes him back to her house, lets him use her stove to cook pancakes -Daisy’s favorite- and helps him smuggle them in under his leather jacket. All for the price of a motorcycle ride.

Jesse’s belly burned for nights after where her little hands had overlocked to hold onto him during the ride, burning him and cooking his guts hot and wanting even beneath the leather and the layers.

“Donna’s got the same spatulas you use, mama.” He’s reporting by the third week.

“The baby’s the size of an cantelope.” she reports back.

“What’ve y’all been doin?” he tries to make conversation and even to his own ears he sounds suspicious. When did he start to sound like Jack? How much more could daddy possibly screw this up? Knock his ex-wife up doubly? Like a cat? Jesse snorts and covers with a cough.

“Talkin’ mostly, floatin in the pool.” he can hear her shrug from here, “It’s terribly hot.”

“Mmm.” he sympathizes.

“We got a marriage license yesterday.” Daddy pipes up and Jesse lets out a stifled sob of relief. The gang is back together, it would seem.

“Cool.” he rasps before Donna passes and then approaches in concern for his blotchy face.

“You ok?” she asks gently.

“Yeah, yeah fine,” Jesse scrambles, “hay fever. Killer.”

“Who’s that, Butnin?” mama asks.

“Uh, umm nobo-“

“Is that Donna?” she guesses and he winces for the umpteenth time at this damn phone.

“Mamaaaa.” he begs.

“Can I talk to her? Please, please!” she begs in turn.

“Mama no!” Jesse pleads right back and Donna backs away with that keen sense of intruding while unable to suppress her fond smile at this cute, boyish side to such a burdened young man.

By week four Donna and him have taken to walking Daisy along the corridors, getting her strength back and making her move, her always lanky frame a featherweight between them now. They all share a laugh at how Daisy towers over Donna’s tiny self, has to hunch to use the petite nurse’s shoulder while Jesse’s height makes her strain to reach. They can use a laugh, the stares they get as Daisy’s famous face gets hauled past in pajamas and socks makes Jesse lose all appetite afterwards, his fingers going cold and his lips numb. He’d like to punch something but everything here is breakable, his sister and his family’s reputation, most of all.

It’s not fair to her and it’s more work for her but this loss of appetite worries Donna and by the end of their long day’s shift they’re together again as she force feeds Jesse tacos from a nearby stand, as they walk around the old part of the city and inadvertently become friends. He may have sucked some mango salsa from her fingers, but neither of them mention it. Too busy watching the others' faces as the sun dies out and eventually he drives her home, her body tucked behind his on his bike, wind whipping her hair that’s escaped his offered helmet.

By the fifth night of this routine he steals a kiss. It’s not hard fought, she leans into him eagerly and for the first time in his life there’s nothing about conquest in the act for him, it’s just…nice. So nice he tries it the next night while they’re sat on his bike, parked by a dance hall. It’s less nice and more like licking fire this time, suddenly his sweet intentions for her are a burning mass of need and that night Jesse goes back to his dinky motel alone and engages in wasteful practices in the shower. Donna had asked where he was staying and when he told her she’d been aghast.

“I just prefer something more -normal.” he’d said.

“Sure but -but that place is dangerous, Jesse.” she’d been so concerned for him and he gobbled it up like a starved man. “Normal folks don’t stay there even.”

“Maybe I’m not normal.” he’d quipped and Donna thought about his mother and her mafia connections, the ones with the dirt that sank Colonel Parker during the divorce, she thought of the bike clubs that Jesse is seen frequenting in the magazines, she thinks about how far the Presley’s might go to reconnect with normal folks -she holds her tongue. “Don’t worry ‘bout me, lil, I can handle myself.” he’d assured her as he thumbed out her frown.

“I know.” Donna had replied, “I mean, I’ve read about how you handle yourself.” and she’d run an admiring hand down his bicep before kissing him again.

That was another thing he liked about Donna, she didn’t play stupid about his family and she also didn’t pry. She’d read about him and Jack bustin’ those guys asses for what they did to Rosalee and she mentioned it. And left it at that. Jesse liked that maybe most of all. He also liked how everything he’d trusted her with never got related by anyone else. No nursing staff gossip or a sweet insider tip for a newspaper. Donna took his trust and tucked it tight inside her chest, right in that tender heart of her’s. He liked that about her, right next to her sweet smile and her warm nature and the feel of her breasts smashed to his back on a long ride.

“You’re in love.” Daisy goaded him the next day as she scribbled in the journal he had gotten her. They encouraged writing here and Daisy’s material had gradually shifted from juvenile doodles and giant block letters proclaiming “JESSE IS AN ASSHOLE” to something that looked alarmingly like stanzas as he snooped over the top of the pages.

Jesse colored brightly at her goad and adamantly refuted it. “That’s the drugs talkin’.” he joked.

“So you’re just passin’ time with her.”

“I-I-I dunno, Daisy.” he spluttered, “It’s not exactly hoppin’ here when you’re out cold. Can only call mama so many times a day. Gotta talk to someone.”

“Does mama hate me?” she asked suddenly and he stopped cold in the middle of tuning her guitar to stare at her dumbly. “I mean -I deserve it I just…”

“No she don’t hate you!” he found his voice, “Don’t be an idiot. That self pityin’ mope don’t help the beauty of those dark circles none. She’s just wore out.”

“I wore her out.”

“Mm well, we all had a hand.” Jesse fudges.

“Ella told me to just get on with dyin.” she reveals, and Jesse puts his pick down for good this time, taking a deep breath and trying to listen coolly. “When mama was taken to the hospital and layin’ there unresponsive, Ella said I’d brought her to that, said if I was so intent on killin’ myself that I should get on with it and spare mama the suspense.”

“Well,” Jesse tries for a moderate tone, “that was a shitty thing to say.” he concedes, “And you -don’t pay Ella no attention. She’s worried and scared to death half times that Johnny won’t come back from ‘Nam. And now she’s takin’ care of Marie on top of her own baby. She’s just a little vinegary, thas all, pregnancy hormones. Took it out on you.”

“I think she’s scared the guy she married in such a rush is gonna come back.” Daisy growled. She crossed out a line angrily and Jesse was really starting to worry about those scribbles.

Jesse let her finish before he asked, “Why’s that?” It’s not like he got much thinking done lately between the court hearings and getting his head knocked about on the turf.

“She don’t love him.” Daisy rolled her eyes heavenward in an action that mama would have looked on with annoyance. Jesse glared at Daisy in her stead.

“People love in different ways, Daisy.” he sighed even as he had no bullets to fight her argument, Ella had left in uncharacteristically rash fashion, seemingly unable to take the atmosphere at home anymore. “And she says John’s a good man.”

“All that means is he don’t beat her.” Daisy snarked.

“Well, that’s a step towards romance.” Jesse joked back and they let the subject lie.

Each day Daisy gets stronger and writes more and more in that little book. Not that Jesse sees her at it most times, it’s just the pen she wedges in to keep her place gets closer and closer to the middle, and then towards the back. Snooping isn’t an option but he imagines they’ve got a lotta heartbreak on those pages, maybe bled out like lyrics.

Now days he makes the walk with her without Nurse Donna, and it’s both sad and a victory in one. Now that she’s strong enough to notice the stares Daisy takes delight in feebly flipping off her voyeurs and that’s a fight Jesse doesn't have it in him to win. If it makes her grin, he allows it, that stupid, crooked little boy grin that his daddy plopped right onto a young girl’s face. She’s perfect, she’s perfect and getting healthy and the stares don’t matter much. Not till he hears a voice he’s become very attuned to, snap at some idling nurses:

“Haven’t you got any work to do?”

And his head spins like a top on his neck and sure enough, that was Donna, temper snapping for what might be the first time in her sweet life, and Jesse feels his tingly gratitude down to his very toes.

“She’s alright, that one.” Daisy smirks beside him and little does he know her enthusiasm stems partly from last night when Daisy gave a little sisterly admonition to Miss Donna that her brother liked her and if she didn’t treat his soft heart gentle like, then Daisy was gonna unstring her guitar and end her with a metal cord.

“How ya doin, mama?” he asks her on a Tuesday and even to himself his voice sounds better. He may be far more tired than he was when he first came in here but his relief at Daisy’s progress colors his tone in hope.

“Doing good Butnin, real good.” she sounds good alright, more than good and Jesse uncurls his fist and let’s himself relax a little as he gives his daily report on Daisy. And Donna.

“Rosalee told me she’s gonna pop in and see y’all.” Mama informs him.

“Good time for it,” Jesse hums, “Mae Mae’s better enough to chat but she could use the encouragement.”

“I bet.” Mama sounds sad again. That won’t do.

Jesse lip curls up in mischief as he asks next, “Jack been by to see ya?” he inquires about that little sea creature hybrid he’s been missing and must call brother, “Brought any dolphins home to meet ya yet?”

“Oh Jesse! Stop!” she laughs a sweet peal of laughter and Jesse smugly twirls the phone cord round and round at his success, “He’s coming to dinner tonight, he has been too caught up before, he’s been out on the ocean for six weeks! I’m scared to see the state of his skin!”

“Welllll,” Jesse drawls, “No way the sun could burn that dimple off so, he’ll be fine.”

“He actually saved someone’s life, uh, day before yesterday.” Daddy’s voice rumbles through the receiver and Jesse’s eyes roll backwards a little at the way he’s never caught his parents separate on this trip, not even once. He can picture the patio phone and its loungers and its umbrellas right now, and imagines that daddy is probably cradling mama’s belly like he can push that magic healing through the skin and make that baby the healthiest infant California’s ever seen.

“Did he now?” Jesse admires, “Makin’ us proud, ain’t he?”

“Yeah, hauled someone who’d been adrift for ages, right up into his boat.” Daddy elaborates without a hint of mockery in his proud tone and Jesse smiles to himself.

“Bout time he put those muscles to use, s’not like he uses them when carrying snails around.” he teases back because having a serious and admiring conversations about Jackson might be a step too far in the healing process. Not this early, mama resting and then getting remarried and cooking a baby is plenty for the plate. Conceding that Jack isn’t a walking disaster is a little too much too soon. Heroics aside.

By week six at the Center they’re into behavioral shit and Jesse can freely admit this isn't the Presley family’s strong suit, but he’s gotta hand it to his sister that she is less preoccupied during it than he is. Out of respect for Rosalee’s interest in the same profession, Daisy pays a decent amount of attention to the therapist’s counsel. Jesse would be more attentive if the first fifty pages of Red West’s freshly published tell-all of his family’s secrets wasn’t banging around in his head. Somehow, somehow it’s not even the dirt that gets to him, makes him stagger out into the hall after a while and crumple against a cart and let the world go dim.

It’s the sweet stuff, the gentle stuff, the stuff that was only ever supposed to be theirs as a family and that fuckers like Red West were goddamn privlidged to be witnesses to, spilled out for all the world to pick apart and psycho-analyze. He hasn’t told Daisy and now she’s asleep and as he’s on the floor in the deserted hall he finds there’s really nothing stopping him from doing what he wants. So he panics and lets himself work up to a dim eyed fury and only the cool shock of a wet rag against his neck brings him back from it.

“Just breathe for me, honey.” That little Texan ascent is saying as he gulps into a brown bag with the embarrassed realization he’s had a panic attack. Sure Daddy had them at his age, too, but that was to go perform in front of hundreds of folks. This is just from reading Red Fuckin’ West’s bad prose. He can hear himself laughing, hiccuping little laughs of derision at himself and it, and Donna cooing all the while.

“You can’t drive your bike like that.” she points to his still shaky hands half an hour later.

It’s comforting watching Donna shut the place down, not that it’s totally abandoned at night, not at all, but just watching her finish up her duties and stash away her papers and arrange her workspace feels as if the heart of the place, the vitality if it, is turning in for the night. And he’s going with it.

He follows Donna like a lost puppy and she doesn’t mind it, he’s sweet and soft spoken and no matter what she does she only gets weak chuckles from him.

His boisterous charm and tired joviality is threadbare and she feels like it’s the right thing to do to slip her hand into the crook of Jesse’s elbow, to gently tow him out of the Center’s fluorescent lit maze and out into the night. He giggles at her guiding him into the passenger side, a soft little noise of trusting gentleness that is bizarrely attractive in such a capable man. He folds his long limbs into her dinky car and waits patiently for her to get into her side.

“What?!” Donna asks him as Jesse keeps gazing at her with big blue eyes and droopy pink lips as she turns the key and fidgets with the windows to get some air flow, “Am I gonna have to buckle you in?” she teases at the way he’s just melted into the seat, head leaned against the headrest and long limbs folded where they first flopped.

“Mmmmmaybeee.” Jesse drags it out and giggles again -and she knows it is common to be a little drunk, a little silly, a little loopy after a panic attack as severe as the one she found him having, but she’s never heard of it or seen it be so cute. Against her better judgment to coddle a grown man, Donna leans over the small console between them and reaches across Jesse for the seatbelt, getting the strongest whiff of his natural musk and spicy cologne she’s ever gotten, it makes the musty cab of the car feel ten times hotter than it was moments ago and she fumbles in her haste to hurry up and distance herself.

It’s silly, Donna thinks, she’s being silly to find this procedure of bucking him in a intimate thing when they’ve done far more, when they’ve kissed heatedly on his bike and danced wildly to that new Elton John record in her off time. They’ve been more forward than this but somehow his pliant and drowsy magnetism has her heart thudding and her body responding in ways not even his glorious kissing could produce. But the way his breath puffs from his lips and the way he looks at her as if she’s everything he wants in this moment makes it hard to brush this interaction off as a nurse with her patient. Or a friend helping a friend. Donna brought Jesse in because he was physically unfit to drive, she is being kind because he’s obviously had an awful day, he’s loose and pliant because of exhaustion -these are familiar things to Donna, they are integral to her vocation and her expertise.

And yet there’s those eyes of his, soft and burning all at once, catching her skin on fire and soothing it right after.

It does nothing to make her breathing calm as she drags the buckle across his soft yet lean belly, down the taper of his waist, so willowy and elegant that it makes her want to cry in envy, sliding it to latch at his hip.

“Donna.” he rasps before she can pull away, his hand shakily coming up to touch her cheek and she stalls, feeling as scared as a kid for what he’ll say next, “You take the sunshine with ya, everywhere you go. M’sorry for those poor suckers we’ve left.” he jerks his head towards the blazing ball of light that is the Center amidst the dark parking lot and Donna blinks at the compliment, absorbing it slowly as his fingers on her cheek do their best to wipe her mind blank.

“Daisy is gonna be fine.” Donna assures, scrambling to order her reassurances for maximum comfort, “She’s getting stronger and she’ll be asleep the whole time we’re gone. A-and we gotta take care of you, ok? Can’t have you going down too, can we?”

“Okay.” he whispers and she realizes her hand is still pressed to his belly. “I-I’ve had a bad day.” he admits, and it’s the first self focused thing she’s ever heard out of this forever uncomplaining boy.

“Let’s uh, let’s get you home -rested. Let’s get you rested.” she propels herself back over to her side of the car and jerks the gear more forcefully than needed before driving them out. She’s not sure they actually talked about it or that it was agreed to verbally but they somehow both know they’re headed to her rented house, the place with the ratty sofa and the duck taped windows and the malfunctioning stove that Jesse cajoled into working long enough to make Daisy batch after batch of fluffy pancakes. She had nearly sprung on him back then, taken him down to the floor and ravished him for being such a nice human being.

The bar might be low for men, but since that day, Donna had learned that Jesse Presley was more than lean legs, a nice ass, a gorgeous face and an earnest desire to please. Jesse Presley was a good man. And so Donna felt no qualms about taking him to her house, plopping him down on the sofa after fetching sheets, and letting his grabby hands tug her down atop him for a goodnight kiss. A kiss that lasted, and lasted, and lasted. Lasted until he was kissing between her breasts, the neck of her tshirt tugged down in a way that would deform its shape forever as she was idiotically scrambling to undo his clunky belt, eager to see the expanse of perfect, golden skin that his face and neck promised.

Donna had never gone this far with a man before but some inner voice told her it was a once in a lifetime chance, not to sleep with a Presley, but to ease a boy who needs so much comfort right now he literally can’t breathe. Jesse’s kisses don’t stop and she doesn’t try to make them, he’s inexorable while being slow, and it’s a combination she’d never witnessed before. Perhaps if he’d rushed her, or made an outright pass, she’d have had time to consider, to deny. But he just kissed her and kissed her as his hands mapped and worshiped her, caressing her all the way from his allotted couch to her bed until she was beneath him, accepting him inside her body like she had let him in her heart.

Idly Donna wondered how many girls his father took and left with the same good intentions, winders if the generations will just keep at it, on and on. It doesn’t feel trite though, she’s not sure if it’s because it’s her first time or because of how intensely tender he is, or the way he cries partway through the act.

“Hay fever, sorry.” Jesse insists weakly.

“Killer this time of year.” Donna agrees, stroking down the sweaty muscles of his rippling back, “For me it’s the cedar.”

She feels trusted with his tears, cherished by his revenant kisses, and never once does he give her cause to regret it, to panic. It’s slow and needy, strong but kind, the whole way through -just like him. Donna’s eyes sting at the realization he’s giving her such a sweet first time, even if he doesn’t know it. She finds herself sniffling with him over the thought that it might be the only time.

“Thank you, thank you.” he gushes, sweet as anything in a thin whisper, after he scrambles out of her and she adds her hand to his to finish him off. He had dexterously snagged a pillow case off one of her pillows and after it had served its purpose, he dropped the sodden thing to the ground.

There’s nothing trite about the way they lay in sweet silence afterwards, the way he doesn’t even try to collect his autonomy but instead winds those long limbs around her and keeps his face on her sweaty chest. “You’re a rare one Donna.” he praises, sleepy and gentle over her heart.

Donna struggled against sleep for the next hour, desperate to engrave the feeling of him laying melted on her in peaceful slumber and the pounding ache between her legs that had finally known a man. Something like virginity that she simply hadn’t gotten around to tossing away, was suddenly something very dear and painfully sentimental to her now it was gone. Now it was now wrapped up in soft kisses, large hands entwining hers to the sheets and raspy endearments. She fell asleep propped against the pillow with his head on her belly, repeating to herself at the rhythm of her pulse down there -it’s just a fling, it’s just a fling, don’t expect more, you hopeful idiot.

Cold sheets, or the sound of the door shutting from his exit or the scratchy presence of a note the next morning were conspicuously absent when Donna woke up.

Instead she heard the sound of gentle babbling, like the way a person might talk to a pet and combined with the gentle wriggling she sensed beneath the sheets, Donna engaged briefly in a time warp and wondered when she got a puppy and who was talking to it. But there was no puppy here, instead, as cognisense fully set in she frantically sat up and beat at the wriggly sheets, Donna found Jesse, still long and lean and naked as she hazily recalled from the dimness last night, wedged between her legs and chatting with her muff, placing chaste kisses to it that barely parted her outer lips.

“No way.” she said her foggy morning thoughts aloud at the sight of this beautiful boy still with her in the daylight and more pressingly -face to face with her used and unwashed and unshaven privates. “Oh what are you going to do?” she wailed as that mortifying relaxation sunk in. “Why’re you down there, you nut?“

“Good Mornin’ to you too, miss.” Jesse laughed and his breath tickled her core that was feeling strangely achy and happy all at once. “I’m gonna lick your wounds, silly.” he slapped her thigh gently as he went on as if to reprimand her while tugging up a mildly bloody sheet corner as evidence for his displeasure, “Donna, ya shoulda said, dear.”

“Oh it’s not a big deal.” she insisted in a bit of a panic to get him away from her vagina and in an attempt to convince herself it didn’t mean much. “You were so good. Don’t worry about it.”

“But you shoulda told me.” he insisted gently.

“There wasn’t much time for talking.” she cringed as soon as she said it but he took that in stride after realizing she was not insinuating any wrongdoing on his part.

“Are you hurtin’ much?” he asked gently and he was still down there, broad and smooth shoulders wedged between her stubbled thighs, tapering down to his tiny waist and that peachy butt and then those legs that were hanging off the edge of her bed like so much lumber. “Donna?” he asked with laughter in his voice as her eyes glazed over in review of him.

“No, not much, you were very nice. It felt great.” she insisted truthfully and ended with a little hiss as he ran his knuckles along her petals. “I mean, I-I’m honestly not sure I’m up for more activities right this minute but it’s not bad. It’s not hurting. Please don’t worry about it.”

“Did you even…peak?” he asked and his face flushed red like he was most ashamed of not being sure of that.

“No I-I was mostly just soaking up the whole…experience.” she admitted because it was true and didn’t strike her as deplorable at all. He had been big and she was new and it wasn’t quite comfortable enough to get there. Which hadn’t diminished the experience or changed the point of their tryst anyway. “That wasn’t the point of it all anyway.” she said softly while reaching to push his hair out of his eyes. It had grown inches since she first met him. “Not for me.”

Jesse’s face softened quickly at that. Like she had struck a nerve and soothed him all at once. “Yeah,” he nodded, “it wasn’t for me either.” and it feels like a far larger confession that it is for both of them, “Which is rich comin’ from the man who got to come.” he laughed at himself right after and she did too. “Now spread these legs so hims can do a lil community service on hers poor widdle clam shell.”

Donna never would have thought such babyish, almost infantilizing gibberish could be so authoritative but the potency of its endearing qualities, with his skilled tongue and earnest desire to please, ensured her cooperation so that they didn’t leave the bed for hours yet. Donna soon forgot her unshaved legs, her need for a glass of water and the fact she’d forgotten to set an alarm -and then when she recalled that detail in a lull of his caresses, she recalled that it was Saturday and she was off. And then he wiped her mind blank again.

It wasn’t till halfway through the radio blasting Dancing Queen and Jesse discoing in jeans and nothing else while flipping an omelet that it seemed to occur to him there was a life outside Donna’s little place and Donna’s fluffy hair and Donna’s ratty rented flat, and Donna’s sunshiny smile. She watched as reality intruded on his creaseless features, an instant pucker and burdened eyes clouding that ethereally sweet face as the outside crashed in.

A world outside Donna. It felt as good to see how well she’d helped him to escape as it was painful to watch it all come back down on him, weighing like a mantle on those strong shoulders.

“Shi-eeet!” he slid to a screeching stop of his jiving in his sock feet across her linoleum floor. “I was gonna call mama, see how they’re takin’ the book release stuff.”

Donna had vaguely heard gossip about what she supposed was the book in question. A dirty little tattle tale by a fired employee is all it sounded like to her. “It’s bad then?” she asked.

“Shitty enough grammar to make me puke.” he joked bashfully and she supposed that it was his way of asking to drop it. “What’re you doin’ with your weekend? Like today? What else ya doin?”

“Not much.” she admitted, crossing her arms over the baggy shirt she’d donned to watch him cook her breakfast. “Um, I suppose I should get more groceries-“

“-I’ll make ya a list and we can go.”

“-and, oh. Ok. Yeah. And umm, well, I need to check on my dad. I usually spend my Saturday dinners with him.”

“Oh.” Jesse bit his lip, “I-I can go…you wouldn’t mind me taggin’ along for the groceries bit?” he asked.

“Of course not!” she tried to laugh off her butterflies, “Are you worried I’ll buy the wrong flour?”

“No, I’m worried you’ll buy margarine instead of good wholesome butter.” he growled gravely as he looped his arms around her waist and tugged her to him, laying his chin on the top of her head like she was dear to him and the butterflies went rogue in her belly against all her attempts to stay untangled. “I just wanna be with ya.” he admitted and she shuddered, winding her arms around his willowy waist and clinging on.

“I’d like that.” she admitted.

“Lemme just call my Mama real quick?” he asked.

Donna cringed before admitting, “I don’t have a working landline.”

“What?” Jesse pulled away just enough to look her in the eye, his own wide in protest, “Good lord darlin’, that won’t do. Livin’ alone and no phone for me to hear if you’re alright. Well, lemme grab my shirt and- help yourself to the omelet, baby. And remind me to get ya a damn phone!” he was already disappearing down her hall and she stared at the egg and ham concoction before her, wishing the terrible anxiety she felt over much she liked him would calm so she could taste it.

They ended up swinging by the Center first as Jesse acted like he’d committed a murder when noon rolled around and he hadn’t checked on Daisy yet. Donna felt for him and recalled the feel of his tongue too clearly to a fuss as she flicked her blinker to turn left, away from groceries and phones, and back towards her workplace. Some little part of her hoped he’d forget his promise to buy her one, it was extravagant and a little embarrassing.

The thumping beat of Springsteen’s Thunder Road filled her car with verve that matched the muggy exhaust tainted breeze that whipped through the windows and the noonday sun that glinted off Jesse’s rings as his hand wind surfed out the window.

“I got to play bass on this one.” Jesse murmured like someone might mention they had a hand in scoring a strike in their local bowling championships.

“What?! On this? You’ve worked with Springsteen?” she cried in shocked admiration.

“S’all my mama’s doin’.” he insisted as if regretting he’d made a deal of it. “A-and daddy. He taught me bass.” it’s the first personal thing about his daddy he’s divulged and Donna tucks it away for safe keeping.

“Aren’t you marvelous.” Donna swears.

“Hardly,” he blushes, “S’just when your name is Presley and your mom’s got her hand on the levers -artist’s tend to let ya mess about.”

“I somehow doubt they’d let a complete dud jam on their album.” she snarks and he bites his lip and doesn't retort.

The harmonica warbles on and Jesse’s hand raps out a rhythm on the car door. “-show a little faith there’s magic in the night! You ain’t beauty but hey you're alright, and that’s alright wi’me.” he sings to her, far more melodious than Springsteen’s grit and his eyes sparkle far more than stereo light ever could.

Once parked he worries his lip between his fingers as he stares at a faintly familiar car parked by his bike. It’s probably telling enough that Jesse left the thing here and went home with someone else. Or maybe folks will assume he wandered the streets and dive bars all night. At least that would spare Donna’s reputation while at it. “How ‘bout I go in first a-and if you want you come in later or -if ya don’t mind, you could wait out here? I’ll be back! Soon, I-I won’t dawdle, I swear!” he assures.

“Jesse, take all the time you need.” she smiles at him, leveraging her chair to lay back as sunbeams bathe her in a lemony glow, “I’ll be out here working on my tan.”

His smile is so full of relief that Donna realizes he was worried she’d be offended by his distancing himself and if he weren’t so relieved then maybe she’d be tempted to be offended. But she can’t bring herself to be. It’s all a mess in her head but she figures she can not make it worse by being accepting of the fact he doesn’t want to be seen with her. It’s ok, his smile makes that ok, as does the way those long fingers unclasp his seatbelt and the way those long limbs lean over her in a mirroring of last night and she feels those plush pink lips smooch her forehead, long and devoutly.

“Sit tight, baby.” he commands with his lips barely leaving her skin and then he’s out the door and strutting across the parking lot without a seeming trace of nervousness.

Rounding the hall down towards Daisy’s room he passes by the familiar wall phone and stops in his tracks at the sight of Rosalee propping Daisy up while having the receiver wedged between their cheeks. For a flash in his mind they don’t look a day over six with their scrunched faces and contrasting hair, always so compatible while entirely opposites.

Rosalee spots him first as Daisy is busy yacking at whoever they’ve held captive on the line and her blue eyes light with sweet recognition as she teases, “Well hey loverboy, good morning. Or is it afternoon?”

That makes Daisy look up and she answers someone on the line by proclaiming, “Yeah, he juusssst nowww walked in.”

“Who is that?” Jesse mouths, his forehead a washboard of wrinkled anxiety that Rosalee can’t bear anymore so she cracks and admits,

“It’s Mama, silly.”

Jesse relaxes a little on that account, moreso for the fact Daisy has obviously gotten past her presumption of being hated by their mother, if the giggles and gumption in her talk are any clue.

“Well yeah, I think he can talk,” Daisy is saying, “I mean I dunno, I’ll ask him. He looks like he’s missing a few ounces of fluids. You still got your tongue Jess?”

“Hush up!” He begs, pink in the face at the thought of mama thinking he’s been sleeping around when he was entrusted by Daddy to take care of his sister.

Daisy sticks her tongue out at him and Jesse finds that more reassuring that she’s stone cold sober than any other behavior he’s seen from her in rehab. Checking to make sure their squabble is unwitnessed, Jesse turns back and sticks out his own.

“Eww put that away, where’s it even been this morning?” she groans and his closes his mouth so fast his sisters become convinced of what had just been a suspicion.

“Oooh…” Rosalee coos.

“Nope nope nope.” He silences them with a meaningful hand chopping motion to the throat, “I kinda had an episode last night, and uh, Miss Donna was kind enough to lemme ride with her since my hands were shakin’. That’s it.”

“Oh Jesse!” Mama’s concern is loud enough over the phone to blast Daisy’s eardrums and reach his own, “Are you ok? You gotta make sure you eat and sleep. Did you sleep? She taking care of you? Baby? Are you -is he there, y’all?”

Rosalee scootches aside and pats the tiny sliver of white wall between the twins in invitation and resignedly he wiggles between them as Daisy laughs and tugs on the cord to help it reach him. Tucked together like this it feels doubly absurd to Jesse to be so fretted over and also, entirely soothing. He flings a lanky arm around each girl’s shoulder and squats a little to help Daisy reach his ear as she holds the receiver for him.

“Mama I’m fine.” he insists mid giggle as Rosalee’s finger finds a way to his armpit.

“Yeah, so fine you can’t drive!” Mama retorts and it relieves him that she obviously thinks the best of him, that he was in bad enough shape to go to a random girl’s house and not that he’s behaving like an absolute horndog in a new city. Just to make her not worry, he half wishes she’d think worse of him and just be displeased.

“Alright so, maybe I snooped through Red’s book yesterday.” Jesse admits since he intended to see how daddy and she were taking it, after all. “And it’s such shitty storytelling I got a little worked up. You know how I am when folks lyrics are dry a-“

“-Red wrote a book?” Rosalee interrupts as does Daisy with a-

“-am I in it?”

Jesse purses his lips and nods, twirling the phone cord and waiting quietly for Mama to say something.

When she does it’s a droll, “Red made takin’ LSD sound boring.” And between Donna’s sweet lovin’ and mama’s superhuman ability to shrug off the most defaming shit on the planet, Jesse is left smiling and burdened with only one small anxiety.

“How’s daddy takin’ it?” he asks as his ear gets pinched from Daisy mashing her face to his, eager to overhear. Rosalee is just face watching and Jesse knows she’ll get more information from that than if she listened.

“Oh, a bit hard.” she admits, “It's just so -so- tacky. To do that to a friend!” now she sounds mad, “When did we ever hurt that narcissistic fool? If our lifestyle was so unbearable he coulda quit, he had two decades to do it.”

“Yup.” Jesse pops the word for emphasis and notices someone down the hall has a disposable camera pointed at their little huddle. He supposes they do look a little bizarre, stacked in the alcove like overly matured sardines.

“Anyone giving you trouble about it?” Mama adds in concern.

“No. You know it jus’ came out yesterday and I-I-I haven’t been out and about much today.” Jesse admits and Daisy makes suggestive hand motions at waist level that he pointedly ignores.

“He predicts that when we’re in our fifties we’ll get back together.” she murmurs.

“Spoilers!” he hisses and mama laughs as does someone in the background that could only be daddy. “A real, genuine prophet, that Red.” Jesse wheezes. “And daddy,” he hollers loudly in hopes he’ll hear, “he were wrong about me hating the damn rollercoaster. I shit my pants everytime outta joy, I swear. Don’t let nobody make ya doubt that.”

For a minute all he can hear are mama’s suppressed belly laughs before Daddy’s rings clatter on the other end and the kids can almost hear the scratch of a sideburn against the mouthpiece, “Y’all can hear me?” he rumbles through and Jesse’s face gets smashed from both sides as the girls crowd in.

“Yeah we can hear ya daddy.”

“Alright then listen to me, lil munchkins,” his voice sounds as deep and smooth as chocolate, even over a trashy phone speaker, and they all hypnotically sway in anticipation of his next word, “y’all know how much I love each of ya, that I’d happily burn down my trophy room ‘fore I let anythin’ happen to the window boxes with yer various uh, weeds and rocks and such in ‘em that Red was always mockin’ and uh, I wanna apologize to ya, from the bottom of my heart, that I hindered y’all in your quest to strap the Wests to Roman Candles that one christmas. Ya had the right idea.”

Jesse’s day gets magically better after that phone call, like one sentence from Daddy can patch up his whole life. But deep down he knows, it’s a thread of Donna running through the whole thing, buoying him up, smoothing out the creases, patching up the little cuts. It makes daddy’s voice sound richer and his promises truer and Jesse holds the receiver and smiles as Rosalee makes plans to drive back for classes and visit them while she’s at it and Daisy suggests baby names.

Things are as they should be and somehow that means he ends up walking out into the parking lot with his two sisters, one of whom was technically not released and piling into Donna’s beat up Oldsmobile and taking off for the grocery store as if that were a sane thing to do. Rosalee tries her best to meet the young woman driving them and Donna is anything but cagey, yet with Daisy’s blathering about her and Jesse’s blushing over her and Donna’s slightly overwhelmed joy at it all -they make for a chaotic entourage picking out butter and pickles and hamburger buns.

Next stop, Donna watches as Jesse and Daisy spend a solid twenty minutes weighing the value of different landlines when all Donna needs it for is to answer if she’s been murdered or not and during this analysis she learns from Rosalee that the auburn haired girl with the bashful grin is going to school at Stanford. Nearly gave her father a heart stack, she laughs when she tells it, but she wanted to study psychology and be nearer him -the subtext that Elvis was more often in Vegas than at his own home goes unsaid and Donna doesn’t bat an eye.

For what the papers have to say about this family, there’s never once been due credit given for their love and comradery. It couldn’t have been easy and maybe it was far from good at times, but the Presley’s didn’t create this much love from a vacuum. Some aching part of Donna wants to meet them all and watch them in their natural habitat, swear to them that she gets it, that she’s so starved for it herself she’d trade anything for such affectionate dysfunction.

The phone Jesse buys her has no superior merits in static or connection but it does have a zebra print handle on it that Daisy insisted was the height of chic, and he insisted in turn that Donna deserved sexy things. Looking down at her overalls and plaid shirt, Donna has to agree she’s not exactly in Jesse Presley’s league.

Before she can think on that for too long and get herself into knots about it, they’ve piled back into the car and Daisy is eagerly asking if they can get dinner -if she can eat outside of her fluorescent lit, sterile white prison. Donna feels for her and she can see Jesse trying to formulate an excuse, how now is time to let Donna be as she’s gotta go visit her dad. If she weren’t so convinced these dear kids actually liked hanging with her she’d never have the guts to suggest it but they’re too honest and forthright in their affection for her to doubt it so she hears herself suggesting:

“Y’all could come meet my dad? H-he loves your dad’s music. Learned drums awhile back just to match Fontana. I know he’d love y’all to bits.” Rosalee and Daisy raise a chorus of agreement in the backseat but Jesse hesitates and Dona refuses to be hurt by it. He’s obviously the more cautious of them, and he’s got reason to be. Donna thinks she saw someone taking photographs of them all as they came out of the market.

There’s also the unspoken worry about putting Daisy out in public so soon with surroundings teaming with alcohol and other temptations. It makes Donna clarify, haltingly, “It would be somewhere quiet, wholesome. My dad he’s um, he’s a recovering alcoholic, see? That’s how I got into nursing, mama left to go get more from life and I stayed to take care of him. He’s been clean for a good bit now but -he could use the friendship.”

Daisy looks like she’s about to take offense at being considered only fit for friendships with washed up drunks and Donna gets it, that it’s touchy but it needed to be said if they’re going to meet him. Rosalee intervenes instead with a soft,

“Sounds good to me, we’d love to meet him. For my schedule it works, doesn't it Jesse?” she asks, “I mean, as long as it’s somewhere quiet? Maybe out of the city proper?”

“Yeah,” Donna agrees, already having a joint in mind, “we’ll get out of the city. Maybe out by Plano? They’ve got good barbecue at this one place.”

“Jess?” Rosalee asks again, softer this time.

Jesse just turns around in his seat, long arm bracing himself and his bulging forearm stretched across the console and Donna’s mouth waters at the popping veins and nimble fingers as she watches him stare a mute Daisy down. “Can I take you for barbecue with Miss Donna and her daddy and trust you to behave yourself?”

“Oh for fu-“

“Daisy?” Jesse cuts her off, dead serious and so easily authoritative that Donna’s legs rub closed despite the inappropriate context. He’s not all sweet boy and needy young heir and it gives her shivers. “I mean I don’t want even a raised middle finger outta ya, you hear me? Just imagine whatever you do is gonna be plastered everywhere, think about that and we’ll go. We got a deal?”

Daisy seems to weigh her anger at her brother’s bossiness with the dire need for something besides hospital food and after twenty tense seconds of belligerence she gives in with a hoarse, “Deal. Gosh it’s not such a big thing, relax.”

That night Donna’s love for them gets cemented. They’re only licking their fingers of sticky sauce and ordering five different smoked briskets to try but the kids make conversation like they’ve learned a bit of everything from everywhere. Which in retrospect, Donna assumes that maybe they have, exposed as they were to the best and the worst, but she didn’t expect it to be so natural and kind, so outwardly focused where Jesse pulled anecdotes about the Korean War from her dad she’d never heard and a mention or two of Ma from happier times after one of Rosalee’s queries.

Everyone just talks, talks about the stuff they want to talk about but usually don’t. It’s cathartic and Donna hasn’t seen her daddy so recharged in ages. Jesse ends the night digging in his deep pockets for something that ends up being a guitar pick.

“I-it’s my d-daddy’s, sir,” he stammers as he puts it in Donna’s father’s weather palm, “wish he were here to swap stories but I-I-I thought maybe you’d like it. Till you can m-meet him.”

Her daddy takes it gratefully and thumbs over it with a fondness Jesse has seen a lot of folks show for the man he knows too well and they love more than seems possible for strangers. It never fails to humble him and reignite some apprecIation of his own for Elvis’ warmth that’s made it all the way into the heart of a middle aged vet from Waxahachie Texas.

“I’d sure like to meet the man someday.” Her daddy admits. “And thank ya for dinner, young Presley.”

“I hope you will meet him, I think ya will.” Jesse stammers and can’t bear to meet Donna’s surprised gaze, “We owe your Donna a heap, sir. Mama is about ready to come down here and eat her up she’s so grateful. And I uh, I intend to not lose touch.” he mutters the last bit and it makes Donna feel close to faint with hope that her father misheard as they go on to talk about how the press has treated Elaine Presley and eventually say their good nights. Jesse won’t meet her eye, just tucks her into his armpit like her short height mandates for a hug and says goodnight. After the heat of last night she thinks she’ll waste away from such propriety.

As she gets in the car to drive her dad home, working the shift, a bright light slices across their windshield and after the sparks clear from Donna’s dazzled eyes she realizes someone, probably with a professional grade flash, just snapped a photo of them. They’re ordinary people who had barbeque with the kids of a famous man and now they’re being stalked. It’s not fair to them or the Presley’s and her dad rages against the unfairness of it and how nice those kids were all the way back to his place. It keeps Donna from crying over the notion that Jesse went through all those motions this morning to make her think he liked her more than just a lay, and now it’s a sideways hug and a terse “goodnight.”

Jesse’s heart hurts as he drives the girls back to the center in Rosalee’s car, smiling softly as he listens to their protests against his ratty motel and noticing the car behind trailing their every turn. He knew that the rehabilitation was wrapping up and he knew they were getting sloppy at laying low. There’s been a countdown in his head that’s kept him going, after all, and they’re so close now to the finish line that he had burned out and fallen into Donna’s arms for the last leg. The fact it is the last leg makes him jittery with a thousand thoughts at once. The chief one is how unfair it all is.

For her mainly.

But if there’s one thing Donna taught him last night, it was to take a little time to hurt for himself. By the time he sneaks Daisy back into the Center under a cloak of darkness and drives Rosalee to a hotel fit for housing a nice girl like his sister is, his heart just about wants to burst with hurt. He sends Rosalee up to her room with a kiss to the forehead and plans to have her car back in time for her to drive back tomorrow. He goes cback out to the parking lot and making a beeline for the beater Mercedes’ parked three rows down from his ride. He raps on the window and it doesn’t even take the gun in his boot to freak the unexpecting and nosy little bastard in the driver seat.

“Hey, brother.” Jesse greets as the guy actually rolls the window down in his panic on being confronted, “You like my route?” he asks congenially but there’s an edge to his voice that isn’t false bravado, “I noticed ya liked the barbecue, too. Wanna come up to my room and watch me sleep? Or were you gonna wait till I leave and try that with my sister? Hmm?”

The guy, like most guys in the nation, knows what Jesse did to the last fella who tried something with Rosalee, how his brother Jack and his friend Sam and the whole of Sam’s squad from the Memphis police just sipped bourbon while Jesse drug the fucker by the balls down S. Riverside Dr. It makes the smirking boy at his window a lot more imposing than his decent stature, hippy length hair and strong hands seem on first impression. “N-no man I’m here- I’m here to- uh-“

“Just hand me the damn film rolls and we’ll part ways, ok?” Jesse holds out his hand expectantly and the guy hesitates a bit. Sighing heavily, Jesse reaches into his back pocket for the persuasive shit and he can see the man’s panic show in his eyes again as Jesse reaches, only for it to be replaced by confusion as he’s presented with a badge of sorts. “This here badge was given to me by President Nixon himself, alright? Back when he asked to meet my daddy in the Oval Office, and he gave me this badge and it’s got the authority to demand such private property as photographs of my face and my sisters’ faces, ya understand? I wouldn’t wanna get you into trouble none by writing a damn reportc a. Just -hand ‘em over, k?”

The guy still hesitates, doubtful he’ll get off so easily and wary to give in and still get his ass handed to him. To be perfectly honest he doesn’t care much about some badge that some impeached President gave a rockstar’s fifteen year old kid . “Really, dude, I’m just here to meet a-“

“You really wanna see what my daddy gave me for my birthday last year?” Jesse asks with burdened patience and somehow, without it even being said, the man knows that birthday gift was a gun. Elvis Presley has been downright insane for some time now, it just fits. Jesse Presley, lanky frame bent to wedge into his low window like a looming specter in the dark doesn't look much more stable. He fumbles in the passenger seat and grabs the priceless rolls containing an excellent shot of that girl he’s been hanging out with, in her car with her dad as she pulls out of the barbecue place. It hurts the guy deeply to watch them go but he comforts himself with the thought of all the earlier snaps he’d managed to drop at the publishers earlier.

“Here, Jeeze.” the guy plops them in Jesse’s large palm and Jesse’s fingers curl over them elegantly while his pointer finger beckons still.

“Gimme the one in the camera, c’mon now. I’m not stupid.”

“You can’t shoot me-“

“No, I can do way worse, believe me. The roll, give it here!” Jesse’s ringed fingers make a gimme-gimme motion and the guy notices that those rings would make a mean and gaudy sort of brass knuckle if tested. His nose hurts at just the thought.

He hands over his camera and despite expecting the kid to drop the precious thing and stomp on it or something, all Jesse does is pop the lid and take out the roll. Adding it to the others in his back pocket along with that stupid and sentimental badge that belongs in an era back when his famous daddy still had the nation’s respect.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Jesse murmurs as he hands back the neutered camera, “and I hope you understand that if I ever catch you at this again, for myself or my friends, you’re gonna have more audits and subpoenas than you do donuts in that gut. Am I understood? I’ll bury your ass.”

It’s freaky getting threatened so effectively by a teenager. Like he’s old inside and knows that paperwork is scarier than a knife when you’re tired and broke. Most of these Presley’s belong in the loony bin or the MET, with Elaine Presley being the latter and the rest of her family the former. Either way, all of them need to be under lock and key, except they're too rich for that. And they’re certainly rich enough to make the guy’s

I life a living hell. Or very rich if he were to sell pictures of Jesse Presley necking a rehab nurse on his bike.

“Yeah ok, can I go?” the guy asks, exasperated.

“By all means, get the hell away from my family!” Jesse smiles and backs away, patting at the back of the guy’s car in farewell before the man hears a screeching sound of metal ripping off.

He frantically looks behind him only to find Jesse innocuously sauntering back to his bike in the dark parking lot. Suspicious of what the kid did, and suspecting a poked tire but too scared to get out and investigate while he’s still on the prowl, the guy waits and watches as the kid’s bike revs to life. Sure enough Presley steers the thing right past his window while waving the guy’s license plate like a giant metal envelope in his hand.

“Have fun without this, man, lotta bored cops on the lookout tonight!”

Feeling very good and very angry, Jesse waits at the red light, full aware the guy is watching him and when the fucker doenst get the hint to leave the parking lot ahead of him, Jesse revs his motor and bekons the guy over like a gentlman ushering a lady through the door first. Exhaust fumes have never smelt so sweet to him as he takes a turn trailing the guy until he’s well out of Dallas and nearing Arlington, well away from Daisy and Rosalee.

And Donna. Jesse’s blood boils and the hot summer air clings to his neck as he peels off into the dark of night and heads back to his motel with its greasy bedspread and its mildew shower where he’s gunked up the drain with his fervor for her large lips and sweet eyes and eyebrows that are like busy caterpillars dancing across her forehead. He wants her so badly it’s painful and now he knows what it’s like to be with her and held by her and accepted so readily, so selflessly, so sweetly -it’s worse than before. He can’t even bear to think of settling for shower steam and his fist. He falls into bed and rolls onto his belly, pulling open the bedside drawer before placing the license plate next to the complementary motel Bible. It makes him smile, Donna’s got a phone and he’s got a license plate. He keeps staring at his tin trophy knowing fully well tonight’s slumber is merely metaphorical. He’ll not be sleeping a wink.

He’ll be thinking of her. And how he’s gotta be a bastard for a little longer to keep her safe. And how mama’s about to have a baby and daddy’s about to remarry her and Rosalee just started to sleep herself after the attack and how Daisy will be out and testing herself and how John will be coming home to Ella and their baby and -he really outta visit Ella while he’s here in Texas. And while she’s got Marie staying with her. Marie could use to see another face. There’s so much ahead and none of it needs to involve Jesse fending off reporters so he can go make professions of premature love to a little Texan with a penchant for his pancakes and clitoris nibbles.

Like the planner his mama taught him to be, he steadies himself with a hand to the bridge of his nose and lines all these frantic responsibilities into a tidy row. And to the side are his wants. For a few years now those have gotten a little dusty and he doesn’t begrudge that, not really. But right now he makes another column to this mental checklist.

His needs.

Which comprise Donna and more Donna and Donna forever. It’s so simple, the roses ahead that may take years but it is simple nonetheless.

Go get the girl, that’s what they all say. Daddy had done just that.

Jesse thinks about that phone he got her this afternoon, assuming she’s hauled it out of the trunk by now. He’s already arranged for someone to hook it up by next weekend.

Step one accomplished. He wants to laugh at his own impatience. Step one, already done. Before the end of the week he can be calling her and she’ll be wrapping her fingers around the phone like he wishes she would somewhere else and he can make comments about how nice the barbecue was and she can ask about Daisy’s progress once released.

And they can keep that up. Till he finds a time to marry her. Hopefully not in some red letter year that involves his parents remarrying or making a surprise child.

Hope y’all enjoyed! Your “bugging” and “screaming” is music to my ears, fuel to my fire and keeps me writing, please never hold back -this is a safe space for feral little Elvis loving rodents…like you and me.

If you’d like to be tagged in this particular series please drop a note below. I’ll admit I’m disorganized and have trouble keeping all the requests sorted when they’re scattered, what I do check regularly are the requests in the notes for chapters -and I do manage to get those added. So, if you’ve put in a request and I’ve failed ya, or if you’re new and would like to be added, please pop a note below. Xoxo

@paradsol000

@eliseinmemphis

@prompted-wordsmith

@ab4eva

@foreverdolly

@powerofelvis

@butlersxbirdy

@crash-and-cure

@elvisabutler

@heartbrake-hotel

@stylespresleyhearted

@thatbanditqueen

@crazymadpassionatelove

@myradiaz

@ash-omalley

@arianatheangelgirl

@steph-speaks

@burningloverdoll

@angelface-555

@lookingforrainbows

@missmaywemeetagain

@coolgirl462

@kingdomforapony

@18lkpeters

@richardslady121

@from-memphis-with-love

@lillypink

@artlover8992

@pennyroyalcreep

@notstefaniepresley

@ellie-24

@renaissingle

@waiting4brucewayne2adoptme

@presleyenterprise

@marriedtopresley

@ashtag2887

@dkayfixates

@vampireindistress

@ashtag6887

@i-r-i-n-a-a

@obsessedvibee

@peskybedtime

@goth-cowgirl-03

@stephthestallion

@fav-fanficssss

@loving-elvis

@honeyorangess

@soloangel

@xenaspace3-blog

@60svintage

#elvis presley #elvis fanfiction #austin butler fanfiction #Austin butler #elvis austin butler #austin butler x reader #austin x reader #austin butler elvis #austin butler smut #elvis the king #elvis fanfic #elvis imagine #elvis x reader #elvis #sarge and lil mama #sarge: 2nd gen

147 notes · View notes

fluffywings13 · 2 months

Text

So to the lovely anon who asked about poseidon and percy t fic....perhaps.....

But imagine a world where Poseidon and the Seafam play an active role in little baby Percy growing up. Despite Zues's asinine rules and laws and bullshit.

Posiedon is there. Amphitrite is there. Triton is there. Sally is there.

Takes a village to raise a child right?

Heres a small sneak peek!

Poseidon would not think to be accused of the same mistreatment of his only land born child in this century. “Come, my Prince, you can down it. Strong as your táta. Come to me my most precious of pearls.” The royal family lived by their own Laws, heeding none other, Zeus would never be so brazen enough to strike down the Sea God and his Immortal Family so near to his domain. Though calmed with age and time, Poseidon was still considered one of those among them not to temp, his unpredictable nature made him ever more dangerous then the Council combined. “A few more steps, just a few more, I await to hold you with an eagerness untold of.”

Their place of meeting was the beaches of Montauk, the Land Born child of the Sea living peacefully in the safe walls of the cabin only a few steps from the waves that reside in his blood lapping at the sandy ground underfoot. Furnished to the liking of one ever Spirited Sally Jackson with mixed artfully with the tones of the boy’s Divine Sea Ruling Family.

Percy Jackson knew not of a moment in his short but exuberant life of pain or as though part was missing, no stories of a missing father who supposedly held adoration for him despite his otherwise radio silence, no striking hand of an abusive step father.

Giggling adorably is the nine month of Sea Prince, the breeze from the open expanse of waters behind the royals gathered just in the rolling surf ruffles through the boy’s squid ink black hairs, eyes that change hues based on emotion maintain a glow of the same shine of his dearest táta awaiting his arrival with hardly concealed excitement. Witnessing one’s babe take their first steps was a celebratory occasion transcending mortality. Poseidon hadn’t been there to witness his youngest Prince's true first cruising but he nor his wife and elder son had wasted even a thought of a moment when the prayer of their mortal counterpart reached their ears in the depths of the child reaching this momentous milestone.

Amphitrite maintains the ability not to laugh at her dearest husband’s excitement, especially so when the same hands though smaller in size are seen reaching from her other side, father and son share only a moment of a glance, a challenge to see whom the babe will come to first initiated in their shared glance of silence.

And Triton had claimed no fondness for the babe.

Giggling with her baby, Sally holds both tiny hands tight and secure as she simply assists her treasure in his stumbly pundy legged amble to those who await him at the waters edge, Percy pauses for only a moment to glance between his papa and big brother both of whom beckoning him forward.

Let it be known on the record that Poseidon, Lord of the Seas, is a dirt rotten cheater. His wife laughing openly at his side as their son reaches around her to smack his Father’s arm with the accusation being spoken into existence as the demi-god ambles into the Sea Lord’s waiting embrace. She takes a moment to observe her husband, simply take him in for a moment of observation, as he crows in elation to the sight of his youngest son’s first steps. The way his eyes glow in a manner she hasn’t seen in…Since his first of his many halfing children…his deep rumbling laughter in tune with the infants youthful pitched squeals as he lifts him from the gentle waves among the the shore up above his head.

#pjo tv show #pjo series #poseidad #sea fam #amphitrite #poseidon #triton #percy jackson #pj headcanon

63 notes · View notes

toraashi · 2 years

Text

𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋

info/warnings: venti & kazuha x gn!reader (seperate), fluff, basically no warnings, mentions of jumping from high places (don't try this at home!!!!). very short drabbles

notes from tori: i was going to write more people but the inspiration came and went, so here's venti and kazuha

𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈:

You weren’t quite sure how it happened, but one moment, you were perched beside Venti on the highest branches of the Windrise tree, basking in the sounds of nature and the anemo archon’s company, and the next, you were hurtling through the air.

Despite the utter panic surging through your veins, electrifying your nerves, the sensation was exhilarating. The wind in your hair, the rush of colors as you catapulted towards the ground, and a strange, instinctive acceptance that your life was going to end.

You should’ve known better, for in moments, your momentum faltered, and a gentle, yet intentional breeze eased your landing.

You hadn’t realized you were screaming until you stopped, the wind carefully setting you onto your feet, Venti appearing by your side with a concerned quirk to his brow.

“Woah! You gave me quite a scare there, are you-” He started, but your legs could hardly maintain your balance, and you collapsed into his side, gasping when his arms curled around your waist, holding you steady.

Cheeks flushed and heart beating out of your chest, you lifted your head from where it landed in his chest, peeking up at him dazedly, and the concerned expression on his face melted into playful adoration. “You’re so much trouble, you know that?” He cooed, pushing a rebellious strand of hair back into place (there were probably many of those now).

“Says you,” But your retort held no bite, only a jumble of breathless syllables. They coaxed a giggle from his lungs, and he pressed his cheek to the crown of your head, squeezing your body into a warm hug.

“Fortunately, you have me to protect you from any hard falls.”

Rolling your eyes, you nuzzled into his embrace as your pulse steadied into a repetitive thump, his thumb rubbing soothing patterns into your skin.

𝐊𝐀𝐙𝐔𝐇𝐀:

“You’re crazy,” You called from the lower crow’s nest of the Alcor, a frightful expression twisting your features as you leaned over the ledge. Kazuha smiled calmly (always so calm, it’s nearly infuriating), spreading his arms and curling his fingers, beckoning.

“Are you frightened? There’s no need to be. I won’t let you get hurt. Trust me.” Trust. Your whiteknuckled grip only grew tighter as you imagined the sensation of hurtling through the air, how easily you could splat onto the wood of the ship and shatter every bone in your body. “Love, I will catch you.” His constant reassurance was whittling you down, slowly, but surely, and he could no doubt tell.

Sighing to yourself, you peeled your shaking body from the wooden guardrail, fingers quivering as you peered down at Kazuha’s smiling features from 20 feet up.

“You’ll catch me?” You breathed meekly, and despite your low volume, the wind carried your voice to his ears. Kazuha’s eyes twinkled before he responded, lips pulling into a fond smile.

“Always, my love. You’re safe.” At his reassurance, you exhaled loudly, squeezing your eyes shut and rising to a stand, poking your toes over the side and leering over the edge, the deck swaying as your anxiety heightened.

A deep inhale.

With an exhale, you stepped one foot off the platform, your other propelling you foward, the air sweeping over your body and flourishing your clothes. The wind stole a shocked gasp from your parted lips before filtering through your hair, fully wrapping around your body.

Before your brain could act on it’s instinctive panic, you were encased in a pair of warm arms, eliciting a sharp grunt from the boy as he stopped your momentum with his body. Kazuha’s arms pressed into your shoulders and the crook under your knees, and you heaved, staring directly (panicked) into his eyes, your own wide. Kazuha offered a sweet smile, leaning to bump his forehead against yours before easing you to your feet, his arm still tight around your waist.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He teased, but you didn’t have it in you to fight back, your heart pounding, adrenaline flush through your blood. When his thumb brushed over your cheek, you couldn’t help but lean in to kiss him.

“I trust you with my life.”

#kazuha x reader #venti x reader #kazuha x you #kazuha x y/n #kazuha fluff #kazuha drabbles #venti fluff #venti x you #venti x y/n #venti drabbles #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x you #genshin x reader #genshin impact x y/n #genshin drabbles #genshin impact fluff #genshin fluff

1K notes · View notes

mabelstone · 6 months

Text

Love Language

matt stone x reader

part three of handsome stranger <3

masterlist ✧˖°.

word count: 1.5k

cw: incredibly cheesy, gushy, sweet, slow sex... dare i say love making

note: if you've read/watched me before you, i keep imagining the female character in this with Lou's sort of charisma and fashion sense, minus the bright outward colours. like, very gentle and happy, lots of layers. just very cute.

***

You'd spent most of your evenings with Matt throughout Autumn. It was approaching mid November and there were certainly no shortcomings in the affection department. You'd come to learn his love language was words of affirmation and acts of service. He'd learned yours was physical touch.

He'd often show up with flowers or little treats he'd picked up on his way home from work. Once, he bought you a portable heater when you were struggling to acclimate to the very different Autumn than you were used to.

"It's fall," he'd correct you, kissing your forehead while you rolled your eyes.

This time you'd shown up to his place bundled up with a white fluffy scarf he'd picked out for you. It just made me think of you, he'd simply shrugged it off after you'd thanked him a hundred times. You wore a fluffy coat over a collared burgundy dress with white hearts printed over it, with black stockings underneath, something you'd grown accustomed to wearing everyday in the cold weather of New York. When you arrived, two coffees were waiting on the counter. He'd never drink his until you were there.

"Hey, pretty girl," he'd beam at you when you walked in, leaning against the balcony rails with a cigarette burning between his fingers. You stumbled out toward him, being engulfed in his warm embrace within seconds. The cigarette smoke didn't bother you anymore. It'd become almost a comfort, the smell sometimes lingering on your clothes, a welcomed remnant of the nights you shared.

After weeks of spending your time together, you still hadn't slept with him. It wasn't as if you weren't sexually attracted to him; by God, you were. You were just enjoying taking it slow for once. With Matt, time felt infinite, yet as if it were slipping through your fingers like sand. You were so enamoured by one another that you just wanted to consume each other, fusing each and every atom to his, merging into one synonymous being.

He was the whole package. Externally, sure, he was nothing short of breathtaking. Painfully handsome, tall, captivating. But him. The Matthew you'd grown so familiar with; expressive, gentle, warm, every nice word you could use to describe one's nature. He understood you. He was funny, tentative, and honestly treated you better than anyone ever had. Your dating history, with the douche bags in Australia, was... less than admirable.

"How'd your meeting go?" You smiled sweetly over your shared cups of coffee, your hands thawing around the hot mug and occasionally, between his hands.

"Good, meant my day finished early." He released your hand, stepping up from the couch to open the fridge. "So I had time to make you something." He grinned over at you, beckoning you over with the tilt of his head.

You giggled to yourself but followed after regardless. "Is that?-"

"Golden syrup dumplings," he mimicked your accent terribly, his smile just as wide as yours. "You said you missed your mom and she'd always make them for you so... a little bit of your home in my home."

You beamed before him, cheeks beginning to hurt from your unwavering smile. "You..." You leaned up to kiss him, grin impossibly growing against his lips. All you could do was shake your head incredulously, looking up at him with crows feet crinkling beside your eyes. "No one's ever been so thoughtful." Truthfully, you could've cried from just how sweet he was, but of course, you couldn't be too soft in front of him.

"It's just food," he brushed it off as he usually did, as if this were the most normal thing to do for someone. "Well, go on. Try it."

"It's usually served hot, but I'll let it slide," you joked, taking a spoonful into your mouth.

"So? The verdict?" He watched you intently, his eyes sparkling like a little kid in a lolly shop. "Good as mom's?"

You groaned exaggeratedly, grabbing him by the face.

"Better than mum's," you kissed him again, sighing into him. His arms snaked around you autonomously, your own draping around the back of his neck. He pulled you in closer, your fronts flush against one another. His hands travelled to your hips as he deepened the kiss, yours travelling the expanse of his neck and shoulders. "Bedroom?" You requested softly against his lips, Matt nodding before kissing you once more, taking your hand in his, leading you to his bed.

He sat down, pulling you to straddle his lap, peppering kisses along your neck and collarbones. You purred in his lap, craning your neck to give him better access. Your cheeks heated as you felt him harden against you, that welcome warmth glowing inside your stomach.

"Beautiful," he murmured against your skin, nimble fingers effortlessly unzipping the back of your dress. You stood with his hands in yours, allowing the soft cotton to slip off your shoulders, left to pool around your ankles. He stood too, allowing you to help him strip his shirt off. Your hands roamed his chest, his skin the most inviting warmth to your freezing digits. You helped him slip of his pants, too, both of you standing in your underwear.

To be fair, this was quite unusual for you. A newly introduced intimacy of soft touch and whispered praises. Nothing you'd ever experienced, yet it was the most comfortable you'd ever felt in a sexual manner. Few words were shared, yet there seemed to be a perfectly coherent conversation unfolding between you both that couldn't be translated into a spoken language.

This time you climbed into bed, pulling him on top of you. He was swift with connecting his lips to your skin again, clearly wanting as much of you as he could get. The feeling was unmistakably mutual. You leaned forward slightly, unclipping your bra before slipping it onto the floor. He marvelled over the sight before him, taking all of you in. You guided a hand of his to cup your breast, feeling your nipple harden under his touch. He palmed it with one, the other holding his weight above you. You snaked a gentle hand down to palm him through his briefs, your thread of patience thinning by the second. "Please," your voice was barely above a whisper, the dim light from the kitchen leaking into the room, bathing his body in an ethereal glow.

He nodded, kissing you tenderly before reaching into his bedside dresser and pulling out a bottle of lube. You helped one another discard your underwear, for the first time, no layer of clothing obstructing the feel of the others skin.

How could you gently tell him the lube wouldn't be necessary? One swipe of his finger across your heat delivered the message for you. He almost whimpered softly, watching the way your eyebrows furrowed slightly and your lashes swept across your cheekbones, eyes fluttering opening periodically to meet his gaze as he gently gathered your slick on his fingers.

His eyes met yours once more, a flash of uncertainty, soon extinguished by your smile and nod of approval.

Slowly, he slid himself in, inch by heavenly inch, lacing one of his hands with your own. He let out a deep, drawn out groan, a beautiful harmonisation with the mewl he pulled from you. Your stomach tightened instantaneously, those beautiful butterflies swarming in your lower abdomen as shocks of electricity pulsed through your nerve endings.

Soft breaths exchanged as he slid in and out effortlessly, your hands cradling his beautiful jaw. With each thrust, a gentle hum of appraisal slipping into the shared air between you; the most angelic sounds either of you had ever heard.

This was different than anything you'd ever shared with someone. Tender, premeditated movements, solely focused on making each other feel good. You kissed slow and gently, lips moving in perfect synchronicity.

"You're perfect," he breathed, lips ghosting along your collarbones as he continued to sink himself deeper into you.

Your eyes fluttered shut as you seemingly gained consciousness for the first time in your existence. The feel of his warm, soft skin of his unclothed body against yours, his soft lips brushing yours periodically; barely exchanging words beside his gentle praises and your pretty whimpers and breaths. You were completely aware of your every nerve ending, feeling all of his length delve in and out of your heat, filling you more than perfectly.

"Matt," your words were delicate as they lingered in the space between your mouths, soon buried beneath soft pants as the coil of pleasure within both of your cores began unwinding. You breathed him in, every sense of yours heightening.

He delivered his final slow but deep strokes, losing himself too as you pulsated around him, waves of euphoric pleasure pummelling you in his embrace. You both came down from your highs together, foreheads touching, fingers intertwined.

He gently pulled out, laying beside you, pulling you against his chest. You listened to his slowly steadying heartbeat, a nonchalant calmness you often felt in his presence dispersing through your bloodstream.

"Was this all just a ploy to get me into bed with you?" You lifted your head to face him, an amused grin playing on both of your flushed lips.

"No... but I think now I have another reason to bake desserts for you."

#matt stone #matt stone x reader #matt stone smut

58 notes · View notes

lskisms · 1 year

Text

DEATH RESEMBLED YOU, J. FAHEY

synopsis — you’ve been beating around your feelings towards a certain zemeni durast for months now, but so it seems, has he.

genres &&. warnings — angst, hurt/comfort &&. mutual pining, confessions, canon-typical violence, discussions of loss and grief, spoilers for shadow and bone season 2/crooked kingdom regarding jesper’s history.

word count — 3k

note — in my “writing for shadow and bone” era. will be posting more joel miller content soon, i am just incredibly busy with school and working on a series for tlou rather than any one-shots. i hope you enjoy.

there’s not much you remember right now, which should be scary, losing your memory and all. but how can it be when you’re here, under a sea of stars and cradled in the warm embrace of the boy you’ve loved for years? jesper is so close in a way you’ve never had him, his personal scent of spices and gunsmoke, comforting and familiar, grounding you as he holds you to him.

your ears ring, locking you away from the audible world, but you can see and feel. jesper’s face wavers above you, dark eyebrows drawn together and darker eyes glassy with tears. you can feel the confusion ghost over your features and the words get stuck in your throat: why are you crying, jes? what’s wrong? how could anything be wrong when you’re pressed into his chest and one of his hands, trembling like a leaf in autumnal winds, cradles your cheek? all around you is warmth and you swear you’ve never felt so comfortable, so cozy. when your eyes begin to slip closed, it felt like the most natural thing to do; the darkness was coaxing you into its own embrace, away and further away from jesper. you don’t want to lose the feeling of the boy’s stable chest tight against your shoulder, but you feel so tired, nothing a nice slumber can’t fix.

as you’re allowing that dark tide to drift you out to sea, the ringing in your ears starts to fade, jesper’s voice slowly taking its place. your name sounds so desperate on his lips, each syllable quivering sonically the way his hand does physically. your eyes slide open, struggling to stay open all the way but trying, just to take in jesper’s face for a little while longer.

“hey, hey, hey.” you can hear the tears in his voice now and you’re still missing the reason why. “you’ve gotta stay awake, okay? keep your eyes open.”

you start to form his name on your own tongue, but he shakes his head, effectively keeping you quiet. you’re starting to come to, mind catching up with body, and you realize that jesper’s tears aren’t for nothing. every part of you aches something fierce, but there is a certain kind of sting in your stomach that you recognize is the source of your fatigue: you’ve been stabbed. the dizziness, the way your eyes threaten to slip closed, the full spectrum exhaustion.

“i told kaz i had a bad feeling, sending you off without a partner,” jesper mumbles to himself. you register his free hand at your stomach, pressing his scarf tightly against the wound. when you groan, he looks up, a poignant and solid kind of sorrow written across his face that morphs immediately into worry again when you start to feel that hypnotic pull of darkness once again.

he gasps out another series of “hey” and drags you back into consciousness, letting out a breathy laugh of relief, anything to keep you focused on him, on staying awake. but you’re losing that battle and quickly, something he realizes when your eyes are glossing over and looking through him at something he can’t see. you vaguely register his call of “nina! inej! anyone!” before he bends back over you, forehead dangerously close to yours.

you’d never admit it to anyone, but if you have to die now, you’re glad it’s in the arms of one of the only people who has ever made you feel welcome and worthy. maybe it’s because the crows are their own little family or maybe it’s because jesper knows what it’s like to be on the outskirts of something, not quite part of that ingroup, and never wanted you to feel the same, but ever since joining the group, jesper has been your self-appointed everything: friend, confidante, errand boy. and, like a popular fairytale, you fell for him.

jesper has always been everything you aren’t, filled in every gap that you have. he’s done more than fit seamlessly into your life; he has complemented you in ways that nobody else ever has. with someone like kaz, the relationship is a balancing act, too far in one direction and it’s off-kilter, but jesper, things are perfectly in sync. they always have been. with the way he transitioned into your life and made it feel like he’d always been there, like he’d been meant to come into your life, how could you not fall for him? whether he knows it or not, he’s shown you how to love and how to be loved, a lesson unintentionally taught yet learned eagerly.

so yeah, if you’re dying right now, jesper so close that the tip of his nose brushes yours and his breath fans hot and soft over your face, his arms wrapped tight around you, how could you not be okay with leaving the world like this? in the arms of the first and only boy you’ve ever loved, you can’t imagine a better way to go, though it’s saddening that dying is the only way you’d gotten him to hold you in the way you’ve been dreaming of for months. you make your peace with it. he has to know now, as you lean your weight into his body, cheek pressed to his shoulder, eyes finding purchase on his face, that you love him most ardently, that you have longed to be in this position for so many moons.

and you’re losing it again, that battle with being, and he’s rocking now, taking you with him as he buries his face in your hair, tears seeping through to the scalp. at least when you go, you’ll have a piece of him with you. his chest rumbles under you, his words warm against your skin, a steady plea of “come on. stay with me,” even though you know you can’t. you’ve never been meant to.

the darkness is familiar and comforting, all cinnamon and clove and gunpowder. and it’s soft, too. warm, like you’re pinned under the gaze of someone longing and silent. if this is what death feels like, you ponder why you were ever afraid of it in the first place because this seems like your personal heaven.

but then the darkness begins to break apart, all soft golden light and consciousness. your senses are coming back to you.

not dead, you think. i’m not dead. saints, i didn’t die in that alleyway.

you start taking stock of the senses you do have (sound, scent, touch), but you fixate on the weight on your hand, the dip in the mattress beside you. hand, warm, soft, uncalloused, nimble. breath hot against your fingers. and then there’s the allspice and gunsmoke, secrets of a zemeni upbringing that had been divulged to you in the quiet late night hours of private crow club bedrooms.

jesper.

you say his name this time, barely a whisper, and though you haven’t opened your eyes yet, you can tell that the boy stirs. because you know him the way he knows you, the way neither of you know anyone else. you can picture the way he squeezes his eyes shut, presses his shoulders back to release tension and sleep, things that only you know that he does as he wakes up. only when he shoots up, letting out some unintelligible sound of surprise, do you finally let your eyes slide open, squinting against early morning sunlight.

your name falls from him, soft and reverential, as if treating your name so delicately will ensure that you are alive, will speak your life into existence, coaxing you away from death. you don’t think you’ve ever seen him look so relieved as he does now, eyes shining as he looks down at you. his leg closest to the door keeps shifting, as if he’s warring between letting your friends know that you’re awake and not, though you’re not quite so sure of the implications of the second option.

finally, though, after glancing at the bedroom door, he settles back beside your bed, riding the very edge of the chair as though he can’t bear to put any semblance of distance between you.

“how do you feel?” he asks, shoving his hands between his thighs; it’s a habit of his, you realized months ago, something he does when his hands feel restless, but he doesn’t want to annoy others.

that’s right; you hadn’t finished taking inventory of yourself after you’d woken him up. besides the residual aches and the persistent pulsing of the knife wound in your side, you feel… okay. whoever it was that healed you (likely one of the many grisha in hiding here in ketterdam) deserves a million thanks because they did amazing work.

“i feel alright,” you answer, pulling yourself into a sitting position. “how long was i out?”

jesper shrugs, eyes falling to a fraying thread on the blanket. “a couple of days. which were miserable, might i add. inej and nina spent hours pacing the first few hours after we got you back here and while the healer was working on you.” he pauses for a moment, lips pursed as he turns something over in his head. you almost don’t think he’s going to say anything else until he opens his mouth and continues.

“the silence was almost unbearable after everyone left. i was the only one who stayed.”

you look at him, study the way he is making a point to not look at you. your heart aches: why doesn’t he want to look at me? did i read that night all wrong? it was possible, seeing as you’d been in the clutches of death and entirely delirious. you start to open your mouth to respond when the boy looks up, fresh tears in those clear eyes of his.

“i thought i was going to lose you.”

and there it is, that sharp knife of regret for something you couldn’t control. he wasn’t accusing you for what happened — he knew full well that it hadn’t been your fault. but there were other things, other people he could place blame on: kaz, who hadn’t thought there’d be a need for you to have a partner; himself because he hadn’t fought harder to convince kaz, because he hadn’t gotten there fast enough; the person who’d done this to you (long disposed of by now, if kaz had any say in the matter) because they considered you an enemy, hadn’t known the sweet feeling of being loved by you, of knowing that you were in their corner.

but under all of that, you know that it’s not why that sentence cuts so deep. he’d lost his mother through no fault of his own. and he’d abandoned his father on that jurda farm back in novyi zem under the impression that he was going to university in kerch. he’d lost nearly everyone who meant anything to him. maybe you’d severely underestimated how much value he placed in you, in your presence in his life.

“i’m sorry. i-“

jesper shakes his head, a sad kind of smile ghosting that perfect, plush mouth of his. “saints, it’s so cliche and childish of me, but…” he laughs, a sound thick with tears and dry humor. “i don’t care. i thought i was going to lose you without getting to tell you how i really feel about you. i’m not good with words the way you are, not when it comes to things like this, but you have to know now that i…”

the world around you falls away, the way it had when you’d been on your deathbed in some random alley in the city. there’s no steady hum of patrons filing out after an all-nighter, no street noise from outside the windows, not even a creak in the hall that denotes kaz or some other crow club member. right now, it is just you and jesper and the faint sounds of your breaths mingling in the silence as his words settle in.

“i knew something was wrong that night, but i gave you the benefit of the doubt because i know you can take care of yourself. but it wasn’t even twenty minutes before that feeling was too much. kaz didn’t want me leaving, but i just knew. i knew something had happened to you and then i found you just off one of the straats, bleeding to death.”

the breath he takes is trembling almost violently and your body moves faster than your mind; you can’t stop yourself from reaching out and taking the hand of his that fidgets with that damned loose thread. but you know what he means, that strange, otherworldly connection the two of you share, like some kind of telepathy; you could anticipate things, could sense when something bad had happened, even something great. you knew him inside and out, and vice versa.

“i didn’t know what to do. you were just laying there, not moving. you didn’t even react when i picked you up. it was like you were already gone. and the first thought i had after i need to get help was that i was going to lose you before i ever had the chance to tell you that i…”

he goes quiet, letting his voice trail off right before he gets to the words that you want to hear the most. but he’s looking at you and his eyes are glistening in that flaxen sunlight and he’s smiling that smile that is reserved for you and you alone, something akin to a secret, something earnest and warm and everything else that ketterdam so often seeks out and destroys.

and you realize that you don’t even need him to say it because it’s already there in spades without being vocalized. it’s there in the way he’s looking at you right now, in the way he refused to leave you alone when you were lost in the darkness, in the way he treats you with a safeguarded softness. it’s always been there; you were just too daft to notice it until now.

“jes…”

you’re not sure where you’re going, just that saying his name feels right, but when you trail off and his face drops, his shoulders tensing for a rejection that will never come, you do the only thing that’s reeling through your mind right now.

you cradle his face in your hands and meet him halfway, mouths soft and warm and tasting like sunlight. in his haste to get closer and comfortable, he nearly tips his chair over when he stands, towering over you. his own hands mimic yours, cradling your cheeks in those miraculously soft palms of his, fingertips pressing into skin. it’s not a heated kiss by any means, just something to test the waters, but it’s almost impossible to pull away. this is something you’ve dreamed about for months on end, the one thing you allow yourself to fantasize about as you fall asleep, knowing that it would never happen.

but it is. you are kissing jesper fahey and he is kissing you back. he is holding onto you like if he lets go, the whole moment will fall apart, disappear like a dream. he presses his lips impossible closer to yours, trying to close all the gaps between you, and it is his enthusiasm that finally causes the break away because you’re giggling breathlessly against his mouth.

of course, in typical jesper fashion, he doesn’t even move back entirely. yes, your mouths are no longer connected, but his nose brushes yours, there is a ghost of a touch between your foreheads. he remains so close that when you open your eyes and study his, you can see that the deep brown is not as consistent as you thought; rather, there are small flecks of gold and bronze that interrupt it. you think you could get lost in them forever if he’d let you.

“you’ve no idea how long i’ve been wanting to do that,” he says, the words fanning across your face in warmth exhale.

“i’ve no idea? you have no idea,” you respond, looking at him with complete bewilderment.

there’s no way he’s been wanting this for as long as you have, but he stares back, nothing short of amusement and recognition in his brown-gold-bronze eyes, and you realize that maybe he has. if not longer.

“this is ridiculous. you’re ridiculous,” you splutter, pushing him away by his shoulders and throwing yourself down into the covers dramatically (though mindful of the not-quite-healed-yet knife wound). jesper’s laugh in response is high and youthful and sonically pleasing, music-adjacent, and he follows you, the entire upper half of his body slumped over yours as he tucks his face against your shoulder and laughs more, laughs again, deep and full and comforting. you’re filled with a sense of pride, glad that you’re the one who can make him sound like that, so unguarded.

“that makes you ridiculous, too,” he responds in kind, finally crawling the rest of the way onto the mattress. you cease the playful struggle and he settles in behind you, body fit perfectly to yours, like two halves of a whole. his arm is warm and heavy over your waist, and you place your hand over his, fingers intertwining as you press them to your chest.

you've been in this position before, tucked against one another and reveling in the shared warmth, but this time, there is a mutual understanding that this means more, that it is more. he’s right, that you both are ridiculous for a multitude of things, but you finally ended up right where you are meant to be. there is hope and warmth and the promise of a future that looks brighter, clearer than the lives you lead now. maybe you’ll never leave ketterdam, maybe the two of you are bound to the crows and kaz brekker until death, but now you know you have each other.

#.lskisms #.s&b #.jesper #jesper fahey x reader #jesper x reader #shadow and bone x reader

241 notes · View notes

jinxhallows · 1 year

Text

Uninvited [ The Finale Part 2 ]

Uninvited. a short-ish series ft. Felix, Chan and Hyunjin (& a sprinkle of Jisung for a little razzle dazzle)

cw: 100% AU, afab reader, blood and gore descriptions, ritual self-bloodletting, supernatural creature themes/tropes, vampire theme/tropes, hybrid theme/tropes.

word count: 6.0k (woo dis a big boi!)

Part I - click here

Part II - click here

Part III (explicit content) - click here

Part IV - click here

Part V (explicit content) -click here

Part VI -click here

Part VII - click here

Part VIII - click here

Part IX - click here

Part X - click here

The Finale Pt. 1 - click here

-- SO IT HAS COME TO THIS. THE END OF THIS JOURNEY. I love each and everyone of you that took the time to read my story. This was so much fun! I really enjoy AU writing and supernatural tropes. Please be kind to yourselves ! <3

**taglist <3 (If I missed anyone let me know! it wasnt on purpose i tried to comb all my posts and make sure )

@planetdemon ; @a-person-with-void ; @haleyms ; @wonhottcakes ; @hydroyaksha ; @just-randomm-stuff ; @sooinvu ; @ninjaleeknow ; @thegoddessharmony ; @kittycatkrissa ; @ominous-crow ; @sikebishes ; @strawberriesandknives ; @violetpenguinkris ; @koovvie ;

-----

The Final Chapter (Part Deux)

“Don’t peek!”

“I’m not peeking, I promise.”

“I don’t believe you.”

You press your fingers together firmly resting them against Chan’s eyes as you guide him past the large cardboard boxes that were stacked alongside the walls, a few sit on the floor in the middle of the bedroom. You’re penguin waddling behind him and end up almost tripping.

“Hey! You’re supposed to have hybrid coordination here!” You chide as he laughs.

“I’m a hybrid, I’m not Superman!”

You make a face, even though he can’t see it.

“What’s Superman got to do with your garbage coordination when your eyes are covered?”

Although Chan’s placement is perfect for the surprise, right in front of the bathroom sink and facing the mirror; he can’t help the dismay at your question and he grasps your wrist, slowly removing your hands as he turns to face you.

“You don’t know Superman has x-ray vision?” He almost looks hilariously disgusted with you.

“Syu-puh-man yourself into the mirror and look at all my hard work!” You mock as you spin him by his shoulders to the sink.

“Are you making fun of my acc--” Chan finally faces the mirror, but pauses instantaneously, barely recognizing the beast reflected in front of him. He hadn’t had such dark hair in ages.

“Do you love it?” You say with a wide grin.

“Little witch I--” he runs his fingers through the deep brown, black hair. It was textured in its naturally wavy state after being freshly washed and towel dried.

“It's been so long... I love it.” He shakes his shaggy hair out, his bangs falling perfectly on his forehead. He looks so innocent and unsuspecting like this, especially with his new color. “Do you know how difficult it was to keep that blue? God...” he scoffs, and you giggle as he wraps his arms around you. He’s wearing dark pajama pants, and you’re comfortable in an oversized gray tee and an extra pair of his sweatpants.

“Well, you’re welcome.” You smile as his embrace tightens and he kisses your lips once, twice, before nuzzling his nose into the fine hairs that had escaped the front of your scarf, right by your ear. His breath tickles your jaw and neck.

“God I’m so glad you’re back.” he murmurs into your skin.

You can hear the pain in his voice. The whole lot of you were traumatized from the entire ordeal. Others carried this weight near-seamlessly; Hyunjin being at the top of that list if it were to be listed from best to worst at displaying a false mask of composure and balance.

It had been a little over a week since you and Jisung made it back from purgatory. Other than the gaps in knowledge that Hyunjin had about modern living, he appeared to be coping alright. He remained to himself, or in Felix’s study.

The next best person at hiding their trauma was, you guessed it, Felix.

He isolated himself, so he only truly had to keep his cool for brief moments in the company of others. You two had a few private conversations over the last few days. Sometimes, you’d notice his eyes glass over as he would disassociate. When asked about it, he would firmly insist he was alright and just dealing with the emotional aftermath of the incident, in such a self-aware way, that it would easily ward off any further intrusive questions.

Chan was where the scale began to tilt. Not only was he coping with the situation in his own, unique manner---he was also coping with the fact that he was going to be a father, in the most impossible of ways, and he was feeling all sorts of emotions he hadn’t felt in an extremely long time; and quite a few he had never felt at all prior to now.

It was Chan who pioneered the decision for them to move out of the estate they had been on for hundreds and hundreds of years. Through an old mutual supernatural friend of he and Jisung, they had secured a home on several acres about 4 hours away. Chan agreed to it right away, without even viewing it. He simply wanted to uproot the household and mask their whereabouts as swiftly as he could.

As far as he was concerned, you all could collectively figure out a forever home after the child arrived. The safety of all was his top priority.

He kept his ability to bring the spirits of others up, but he barely honored his daytime deaths, instead opting to stay up and vigilant. The events were trying on his psyche, and sometimes he would break, at night. You’d hear him crying, softly; sometimes you would feel what felt like a kick in your stomach (though according to mortal fetal development cycles, you were far too early to be experiencing such phenomena). It would wake you from your slumber and you’d sluggishly crawl across the bed to where he sat on the edge. You would wrap your arms around him, and hug him tightly, kissing the back of his head as he cried. Oftentimes you would cry too, but you would bite back your sobs, your nose pressed against his silken hair as you’d grip him tighter still.

Not only was Jisung’s ability to conjure severely affected by crossing the lines between the dead and the living an added time—he was experiencing a strange bout of dizzy and fainting spells that Felix was still trying to get to the bottom of. Until he was back to his full health, Chan didn’t feel comfortable allowing him to be alone at his home. Without the level of conjure he held prior, Felix also noted that the protection around the perimeter of his home might have new vulnerabilities.

Jisung refused to leave the guest room unless it was necessary. He felt extremely vulnerable the way he currently was and busied himself sick trying to find a solution alongside Felix.

You hadn’t escaped psychologically Scot free yourself. You suffered from nightmares of an unknown origin that you were trying to keep under wraps from the others. When Chan would ask why some days you would wake up in fear, nearly springing from the sheets, you simply blamed it on PTSD; which was half true.

The other half of the truth was that in the nightmares, you couldn’t see much, it was as if you had been blindfolded. You always heard the same two muffled voices, but it never became clear enough to decipher. What was ingrained deep within you from the visions was the fear and hopelessness that you felt. It was as if everyone had abandoned you, all at once. The darkness was overwhelming and began to make you feel so trapped you’d grow sick to your stomach, oftentimes, the nausea carrying over into your waking life.

Today was no exception. At the break of Dawn, you feel yourself growing groggy. You had been more tired than usual, but of course, this was how things went for pregnant women, right? It didn’t feel misaligned, the symptoms you carried. You fall asleep, feeling the peace of your body being put to rest. Yet what feels like only mere moments later, you blink your eyes open and see darkness.

You feel the rough fabric that’s tied tightly over your eyes. Your heart rate quickens, and you strain to hear the exchange of voices happening right in front of you.

‘...onl...ay’

‘br...a...store....power’

You capture a full word for the first time since your nightmares began.

Power

---

You end up getting a bit more rest than you had expected, which was a welcome recharge to your system. You don’t mention the context of your nightmares, or the full word you managed to catch last night. It would only make Chan more protective, Felix more curious, Hyunjin more stressed, and Jisung more terrified. You could tell everyone, hell even yourself included, were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Chan had told you in the entirety of his life, he’s never felt safe, things have never been normal. Ever.

So, for now, you keep your mouth shut and enjoy the cool, night breeze on your face as you have your passenger side window rolled down. You smell the Northeastern Atlantic Ocean shores, only yards away, the moonlight reflecting off the moving water. As Chan drives further, the tree line gives you brief glimpses of the ocean, but it’s clear, you’re heading far in the opposite direction of it. The forestry thickens and you soon smell damp moss and rotting wood more than the coastal sealine.

Hyunjin is sitting in the backseat, also staring out the window, his facial expression blank. He couldn’t shake off the feeling of being trapped in a world he didn’t understand.

“So, this is it? This is where we’re going to live?” Hyunjin asks, with a hint of sarcasm.

Felix, who’s sitting alongside Hyunjin in the roomy SUV, speaks up. “It’s a roof over our heads. It’s a start.” He replies coolly.

“We’ll make it work, Hyunjin.” Chan says, glancing in the rearview mirror at his fire-haired brother. “We always do.”

“We’re a family. We’ll figure it out, together.” You add softly.

Hyunjin doesn’t reply, but the tension in his shoulders relaxes slightly. You all drive in silence for a while, each lost in your own thoughts.

Finally, Chan breaks the silence as the car slows down on the dirt road. “We’ve been through a lot, but we’re all here now. We’re going to make a new life for ourselves. We don’t really have a choice but to move forward now. “

“Anyway then, here we are.” Chan twists the keys in the ignition and the low rumbling of the engine stops. It’s so silent, you could hear a pin drop at least a mile away. You lean forward, glimpsing the large, Victorian style dwellings. Your eyes are immediately drawn to the thick vines that seem to be growing out of every crevice. The moonlight casts an eerie glow on the overgrown plants, making the house seem almost...alive.

You can feel the discomfort in the car as Chan, who was driving, and Jisung, who’s in the backseat, exchange a look of concern. You can see the dust on the windows and the cobwebs in the corners of the house.

As you step out the car with everyone else, you can’t shake off the feeling of unease. The house seems ancient, and it’s clear that it hasn’t been lived in for a long time; but Chan and Jisung’s friend had assured them that it’s a safe location, and you trust them.

You try to put your feelings aside and focus on the task at hand, but as you walk up the creaky front steps, you can’t help but wonder what kind of secrets this old house holds. Chan wriggles the knob, expecting it to open, but to no avail.

“Hold on.” Jisung emerges, wrapping his slender fingers around the rusted knob. Without turning, you can hear the locks inside of the door turn slowly, as if there was someone on the other side. The way it opens, dust falling from the frame, you begin to second guess this decision to yourself once more.

“There’s no way you sprung me to live like this...” Hyunjin says, walking inside and glancing at the peeling paint on the walls. The rooms are large and empty, with no furniture anywhere. The floors are wooden, and a dark, cocoa color.

“Brother, we’ve lived in worse.” Chan says, his hands in his pockets as he walks forward, looking up and surveying the large chandelier that hovers in the foyer. He looks down at the rug underneath his feet and taps the spot with his toe.

“This is a recipe for a D-List horror movie accident just waiting to happen.” He notes as you join him underneath, slipping your arms around his waist, squeezing the fabric of his fleece jacket between your fingers as you also look up at the chandelier.

“It's almost a full moon.” You say with a grin, kissing him and moving on to explore the rest of the house yourself.

“Yeah?” Chan follows behind you, now that you’ve piqued his interest.

“Yeah, you get really paranoid about things the closer it gets, I’ve noticed....” Your voice trails off as you run your hand over an old hallway display cabinet. Dust clings effortlessly to your fingers, and you brush them against one another to scatter it away.

“You don’t think there’s any way Edith could like...come back, for me...or the baby, or anything, right?” You blurt.

Chan’s brow furrows. “No. We sealed her soul in purgatory, little witch why—does this have to do with your nightmares?” Chan’s gears begin to shift as he puts two and two together.

“No! I--” You look around before lowering your voice, “No, I’m just still afraid. Can you blame me? I barely got out alive, and now I have to keep myself and this...thing alive--”

“This thing? That’s my child that’s...our child.” Chan’s voice softens. He realizes his fuse is shorter around the Full Moon and tries to maintain control. He normally doesn’t let it slip, but he was feeling out of sorts the last few days. “You let me worry about keeping you, and our child, alive.”

You’re a little taken aback at his tone, but you blame it on the oncoming Full Moon. The last one didn’t go as well as it should have, and after everything, his body and emotions were tense. He seems to notice the shift in your demeanor and runs his fingers through his dark hair, now styled back slick and straight. He sighs as he places both hands firmly on your upper arms.

“All of this, its gonna take some getting used to for me, for you, for everyone here. She could be a vampire, a witch, a wolf, or all three. My father was a hybrid, and I came out as a wolf. There’s no rhyme or reason to this it's just...a wildcard, really. It’s a wildcard. I feel like I’ve been given a second chance to get it right this time.”

You can feel the neediness in his voice, you see his eyes, begging, pleading for you to understand him, to validate his reasoning, experience and existence.

Your big, bad wolf.

“Did you say...she?” You tease.

He’s caught off guard as you laugh at his expression.

“Did I? I said she? Did I really?” He asks in disbelief. “I didn’t even notice.”

“Do you want a little girl? Do you think you can handle that?” You say with a cheeky grin.

“No, absolutely not! That’s why I can’t believe I said it!” He touches his lips and looks at his fingers, as if the answer would be splayed on the tips.

“Hey lovebirds, it’d be nice to have some hybrid strength for some of these boxes, yeah?” Jisung slaps the doorframe that he’s looking out from behind as he hoists his box higher against his body to get a better grip. He takes it into the living room and sets it among the other boxes that Felix and Hyunjin had managed to use their unnatural speed to build up.

They didn’t bring everything from the old house, only enough to be able to live comfortably for a little while. The family estate was in their name and would always stand where it was built; but that area couldn’t be considered secure. People over the centuries had been guests, although there had been no disturbances, folks in certain circles close enough knew where they laid themselves to rest.

You were barely pregnant, and certainly felt strong enough to help. Your speed wasn’t up to par like theirs, nor was your coordination, but you had little boosts every now and again. You glance into the trailer attached to Chan’s truck. Figuring out that you could carry a box or two, you grasp one and make your way back up the creaky stairs and into your new home.

Chan’s about to approach you, to chastise you for doing too much, when Felix stops his brother, arm across his chest.

“Let her do something for herself, you can’t control everything, brother.” The white-haired vampire murmurs in an intimate tone. “You’ll drive yourself mad trying and drive her away in the process.”

Chan takes a few steps back, watching as you set the box down in the middle of the room and stand up, feeling more winded than you usually were. You shake it off and head back outside to join the others.

“I can’t escape the notion that something isn’t right, brother.”

Chan crosses his arms across his chest, the sleeves of his deep navy fleece jacket rolled up to his elbows as he stands beside Felix, near the staircase in the foyer. Hyunjin zips back and forth so fast, only the sound of his rustling clothing and dropping boxes can be heard. Jisung is struggling to carry heavier boxes, to get you to not worry about them. You find yourself stumbling along Jisung, trying to capture the other end of the boxes that were too heavy for him alone to conquer.

Felix watches everyone too, his arm resting against the wooden, curled start of the banister.

He wants desperately to disagree; but the brothers knew how their undead lives worked. Now they had a pregnant witch descendant of one of the most powerful clans in the world in their midst.

Felix chews the inside of his lower lip as his brain begins spinning the webs it always spun when it came to strategizing. He answers his brother, barely above a whisper.

“It’s not.”

Chan glances over his shoulder at his younger, pureblooded vampire brother. “Has something been ailing you?”

“The bloodlust.” Felix never takes his eyes off you all milling about, despite Chan boring holes into the side of his skull. “Normally I keep myself well fed, the blood of a witch, the blood of your little witch, it’s tempting but...” Felix’s gaze breaks as he glances down at the floor. His index and thumb rub against one another anxiously.

“The reason Hyunjin and I have stayed out of the way isn’t because of what happened. Well maybe, possibly for him but the bloodlust, it just feels almost out of my--”

“Shit!”

You wince, ripping back your hand from the edge of the box where you had just accidentally sliced the side of your palm with the box cutter. The box cutter clatters to the ground as you grip your wrist, sucking in air through your teeth. You’re pinned suddenly to the ground and look up to see Hyunjin’s eyes, an emblazoned amber, his sclera an ugly shade of blood red as he breathes heavily.

There’s no time to embody enough strength to let out a terrifying scream, as Hyunjin's body is violently propelled across the room and Chan is kneeling beside you, breaking the skin on his wrist and lifting your head enough to feed you his blood. You drink, chest still heaving with adrenaline as you observe Felix, holding Hyunjin up by his fingers tightly enclosed around his throat as the youngest brother thrashes against the wall. The wound on the side of your palm closes itself up as you close your eyes from the sights of it all and continue drinking.

Jisung’s hand lay against Hyunjin’s forehead like a priest performing an exorcism. With nothing but pure, ancient magick, Jisung sends a voltage-like stream of energy through Hyunjin that immobilizes and renders him unconscious; and afterwards, he crumples to the ground, powerless. Felix flits away in the blink of an eye, Hyunjin over his shoulder.

As Chan is overseeing everything and allowing you to heal, he suddenly feels a sharp stab from your mouth.

“Hey, hold on a sec...” He coaxes you from the blood spilling from his wrist, and he looks closer at your teeth, covered in blood and saliva, as you breathe heavily from the consumption of power. The tips of your canines were thinner, with a sharper tip. You had felt overwhelmingly in need of his blood for a while now, and you didn’t know what cravings you were dealing with until you had tasted it like this once more. You were dizzy with how good it felt. It soothed a need inside of you.

“Your teeth, little witch--” Chan says in disbelief and concern as he glances over to Jisung, still unconscious on the floor. In a split-second decision, Chan crawls quickly over to Jisung, placing his head into his lap and re-opening his wrist wound to feed Jisung and hopefully bring him back. You’re busy licking the blood from off your lips and fingers as you quietly watch them. You feel feral, but not in a good way. You feel impulsive, and your emotions are now rising to an uncomfortable place.

Jisung stirs awake groggily, coughing and spitting the excess blood on the floor as he pushes himself up to sit and look around, regaining his breath once more.

“Shit how long was I out for?” he asks Chan as he’s helped back up to his feet.

“A minute, maybe two at most.”

“What the hell was that? That wasn’t normal bloodlust, veins were popping out of his skull, he was being consumed by something else entirely.”

It's just like Jisung getting back to normal immediately after falling unconscious.

“It could be because of the baby, or how long he’s been in purgatory Jisung, I don’t know.” Chan drops his hands to his side in confused exasperation as he kneels next to you, helping you to your feet. Your carnal desires had weakened just a bit now that the aftershocks were settling in. You feel the fuzziness in your brain returning to clarity once more.

Felix is coming back down the stairs, and the four of you gather in the living room. He wipes blood from his fingers with his handkerchief as if it were a kitchen condiment.

“Little Witch, I need you to be honest with me, yeah?” Felix asks, looking directly into your eyes. “Have you experienced anything strange, or off since you’ve been back? Any foreboding feeling, visions, nightmares, hallucinations, cravings?”

You instinctively want to start out by lying, but with Felix’s ability to sense the shifts in your circulatory system; and Chan’s capability to literally smell your fear, you answer honestly.

“I’ve been having trouble controlling my powers and experiencing intense mood swings,” you admit, wringing your hands nervously. “I keep dreaming about being held hostage and hearing voices, last night they said ‘Power’. And to top it off, I’ve been having these cravings, like...I need to consume something that I know I shouldn’t.”

Chan doesn’t add that he witnessed fang like projections from your canines earlier. He decides to leave the others in the dark about it. You’re grateful, unaware of what it could mean for you.

Felix and the others exchange a look of concern, knowing the implications of what you just revealed. They were all well-aware of the dangers that came with pregnancy for a witch, especially when the witch in question was carrying a child of an unknown species.

“We need to keep a close eye on you, Little Witch,” Chan says firmly, his arm coming behind your waist from the side to pull you in. “We need to make sure that you and the baby are safe.”

“I don’t feel safe in an unprotected house, no matter what Minho told us.” Jisung says as he walks around the perimeter of the living room, observing the cracks in the walls, little scratches here and there.

Minho...

That was the first time you’ve ever heard that name before.

“He’s all the way in Russia, I don’t even know why you involved him in our mess.” Felix retorts. He’s now extremely cautious about what family friends they decide to include so closely into their lives. Anyone who joined them were at risk of death in any number of gruesome ways with the danger they attracted.

“You know the Lee family has safeguard housing up and down the East Coast, who else could deliver us enchanted real estate in a week’s time? Besides,”

Chan looks around, “Now nobody in America knows where we live.”

-----

The night before the Full Moon, the night of the Waxing Gibbous moon, progresses, and Jisung is busy using as much of his power reserve as possible to help with protection incantations and conjure to at the very least, make you all undetectable for a solid 3 weeks. With some rest, he could add catch-em's throughout the woods, to signal if anyone was encroaching upon them, and trap them until someone could investigate.

Three weeks would allow the brothers the time to procure a witch of substantial power to drain for the purposes of Felix and Hyunjin helping Jisung to finish the task. You didn’t allow yourself to use unnecessary magick until you could figure out what was going on with your body.

The energy of tomorrow’s Full Moon hangs heavily in the air, which was causing your powers to become increasingly volatile.

It turns out that you weren’t the only one becoming volatile.

The next night, you experienced not one nightmare.

Nothing.

In fact, you sleep quite well, the best you have had in ages. The large, four post bed in the room you and Chan chose is old, with its elaborate gold metal headframe but didn’t have a foul smell and had been covered with plastic. When you further examined the 6, close to 7-bedroom house, you discovered some rooms were furnished, and others left bare.

The loud bangs and clattering were what startled you awoke, followed by muffled voices yelling argumentatively. This house isn't as modernized as the former. The thick, heavy curtains that blocked out sunlight did the same for the moon and stars, unless you physically drew them back. The old place had fancy electronic drapes that rose and fell at the precise moment of sunrise and sunset.

You reach out and turn the bedside lamp on, rubbing your eyes as you stumble over to the curtains and draw them. The moon hangs high in the sky, big and full. You ran to the top of the stairs, clenching your robe closed, as you had little time to get yourself together.

Underneath the central chandelier in the foyer was the large wolf with fur blacker than souls that stir in the dead of night. Scraps of fabric were strewn on the floor, along with quite a fair amount of blood spattered along the walls and carpet. The wolf crouches down, readying for a predatory launch.

“Chan!” You shriek impulsively, covering your mouth when his yellow eyes snap at you, standing atop the staircase. He growls, a snarl from deep inside of his chest, and then he blows air from his nose, almost like a sneeze, backing up two paces with a whine before he’s off, out the broken front door at a speed far faster than an average wolf could manage, and into the night.

You run down the stairs and out onto the porch, but to no avail, he’s already out of your sight. The sounds of coughing and boards falling and creaking are what alert you to Hyunjin as he climbs out of the hole in the front porch, shaking the crumbled dirt and dust from his crimson locks and brushing his plum-colored button up, tucked into his black slacks.

“Well, that was a very rude way to say ‘no’.” he tilts his head to the right ever so slightly, and you wince from the crack that results from the realignment of his spine. “I guess I forgot how strong he was.” he murmurs to himself as he adjusts the cuffs of his sleeve around his wrist.

“Hyunjin, what the fuck happened to you last night? You nearly killed me, and the baby!” Your anger explodes in that moment, but didn’t you have every reason to? If bringing Hyunjin back means you were in more danger than before then maybe you were the only one capable of doing something about it...

You stop in your tracks from approaching him and physically shake your head to get rid of those awful thoughts.

You didn’t mean that.

Why did that even come up intrusively into your mind?

“You’re feeling it too, aren’t you, pretty witch?” Hyunjin hasn’t flinched from his spot, simply placing his hand into his pocket. He looks amused. “I’ve never seen you so fired up like this before. I kind of like it on you--”

You take in your breath and hold it to stop yourself from saying something impulsive.

“Hyunjin, think about what Chan can do to you, and magnify it by 300, I will wear your fucking insides as mardi gras beads if you don’t tell me what the fuck is going on—right—now.”

“You don’t have to sweet talk me that like to get information out of me, besides, I don’t know what the fuck is going on, alright? Christophe seemed to have transformed against his will and now he’s God knows where in this area none of us know anything about.” Hyunjin says crossly with his unique sarcasm.

“And I didn’t attack you on purpose, alright?” his demeanor shifts as he glances away, and you sense a little...worry? Sadness?

“I keep having these fucking...flashbacks of being sealed away. Those first few hundred years...I fought every, single moment I breathed. I – I bled out so many times, and would black out, only to come back impossibly weaker—forced to fight again, and again--”

“Hyunjin, I--”

You wordlessly bring him into a hug and his body stiffens at first, he doesn’t reciprocate.

“Pretty witch I can’t--”

His hands come up to embrace you in return.

“Pretty w-witch--”

His hands are quivering on your back, and you feel wetness seeping into your shoulder that makes you pull back and see the saliva dripping down his jaw, his fangs full and bright, needle sharp, just like Felix’s as he fixes his stare blankly ahead at nothing, his body beginning to slowly rock. He looks like he’s fighting a possession.

“Run.”

You take off down the porch stairs and into the woods.

You glance back as you run, the robe catching on the tree and ripping from your body. You manage not to stumble, but as you’re not paying attention, the remains of a hollow dead tree strike a gash in your shin that makes you cry out, hunched over, trying to keep some distance between you and whatever these wild creatures that you knew as close friends, family even, had become. This wasn’t them. You had to be hallucinating. You were in some nightmare. You stand to your feet again and come face to face with Felix’s hungry eyes.

“Are we playing a game, little witch?” he asks in a lively manner, with a disarming show of his teeth in an innocent grin.

“I win.”

Felix’s lips close, then turning into a smile that reaches his eyes, before he grips you up, his lips pressing against your neck, your pulse racing as you squirm against him, trying to manifest your strengths, your capabilities, your power.

“You smell like pure moonlight.” He says after taking a big whiff of your skin before you feel needlepoint fangs puncture your artery while you feel an icy heat emerge from your fingertips and onto his thigh that you were gripping behind your body. Felix yelps in pain, mutters mumbled profanity, and you hear the breeze through the branches as he disappears into the night.

You’re gripping your neck as its spurting blood all over the ground beneath you and you fall to your knees. You want to be strong; you want to cry out for help, but you blackout from the blood loss and pain from the venom, your body hitting the forest floor.

-------

“--manifesting differently in all of us--”

“-- dead!”

“--sealed her soul, you didn’t--”

You groan as you groggily open your eyes to see yourself back in the four-post bed of your room.

“She’s awake.” Chan exclaims at your bedside. You tilt your head to look at him and then sit up a little more.

He’s all human. All there. He’s cleaned up and well-dressed, which was a stark contrast to the beast you laid eyes on before you passed out.

You passed out.

You touch the side of your neck, but feel the skin totally healed. You move your head back and forth and feel no pain before you spot Felix sitting at the foot of your bed. Jisung is seated at an old desk to the right. Hyunjin is leaning against the window, staring up at the moon that continued its cycle regardless of what happened down here. It's a waning gibbous; at least the energy of the full moon had passed. You feel calmer, and the energy between the boys is subdued.

“Good, you’re awake.” Felix says as he lifts his head to look at you.

“First of all, about last night—I lost control of myself in ways I haven’t felt in hundreds of years. I can only remember what even happened through Jisung bringing my memories back. The last thing I remembered was Jisung and I in the woods, figuring out the lay of the land, and then, I smelled blood...I didn’t just, smell blood, I heard voices in my head. Collective voices like a swarm of bees, all telling me to follow it. The entire time I was fighting impulse and I couldn’t stop myself. I remember feeling a stabbing pain in my leg, and I tasted your blood on my lips and ran as far as I could with what little control I had.”

You listen to him, remembering what you could of the chilling events that occurred last night. The way he smiled at you, so friendly, so unassumingly, he could’ve taken candy from a baby with no consequence. This was only moments before he ripped a hole in your carotid artery.

“I’m sorry.” He murmurs.

“At least I gave her a warning.” Hyunjin shrugs as he continues to watch the trees blow in the wind.

“You call telling her to run headfirst into her death a warning?!” Chan snaps as he stands up, the chair he’s in scraping back against the floor with the haste of his aggressive movement.

You remember the conversation you had with Hyunjin last night before he told you to run, and you tug at Chan’s hand, shaking your head, signaling for him to stand down. He sighs as he reaches between his legs to pull the chair back and sits back down.

“How are you feeling? Is anything different?” Chan asks.

He wants to know about the baby.

“I’ve never been pregnant before but, I feel okay—a little tired but, nothing too crazy.” You grunt as you push yourself all the way up. “I guess this is what you meant by us never being safe, huh?”

Chan exchanges a glance with Felix, who stands to his feet.

“I don’t think there was a way to prevent this from happening, I don’t even know how it all works yet....”

You cling to each word as Felix speaks.

“I have a theory that Edith had a counterspell on her earthly remains. If they were ever to be destroyed, a curse is set loose to reign hellfire on those responsible, bringing out the worst in all of us. I don’t feel it at all today, neither do any of the rest of us. It must somehow work with the Full Moon.”

“Meaning its wolf-based?”

“There are other important things that happen during the Full Moon that don’t involve us.”

“I knew it! I knew she wasn’t gone!” You shove the blankets off of you as you stand up in anger, interrupting their discussion. You look at Chan. “You told me she was gone, you told me there was no way she could come back--”

“She is gone, and she won’t come back.” Hyunjin’s voice cuts between the room’s tension.

“If we can break the curse.”

End.

193 notes · View notes